


Right

by choppyVy



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Boundaries, Choices, Exploring self-worth, Having Choices, Hurt/Comfort, Late-in-life First Love, M/M, Magical Conversion Therapy, Making Relationships Work, PTSD, Pain, Self-Comfort, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 08:50:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 48,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15457662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choppyVy/pseuds/choppyVy
Summary: AU – In a shadow world in which Valentine has been defeated by shadowhunters alone, without the indispensable aid of downworlders, Alec and Magnus have never met. That is until Alec’s bigoted father tries to change his son’s fate. …and does. However, not in the least in the way he had envisioned.Excerpt:“I’m not worth it.”Magnus takes in a sharp breath. “You so are. SO are.”Alec bursts into sudden sobs in Magnus’s arms, “No.” The sobs drown out his next words at first, then, “How could I be? I’m so … so full of pain. Why would anyone want any part of that? I cannot stand in front of you and tell you that I am worth loving.”





	1. Chapter 1

The wound would not heal. That … is how it all started.

  
The three of them had been out on patrol many a time in the years since Clary had burst into the shadow world, into their lives. And yes, at first Alec Lightwood had not liked it one bit. Not her. Although she herself had never been the actual problem, he knows it clear as day now.

  
Back then … back then it had been the easiest and most self-reassuring move to … to blame her, blame her … for everything.

  
Only after the troubles had ended and some peace and quiet had set in around them, Alec had been gifted with the opportunity to stop, stop and … think.

  
This was how he had come to realize one major thing. Had consequently stolen his parabatai away from a busier corner of the institute, hugged him wordlessly for a long time before choking forward, “I am glad you have her. Glad she makes you this happy.” And … he truly had meant every word, most of all … to his own surprise.

Then? Well, … then he had fled that corner of the institute and hidden himself away, waited for the feeling amidst the tightness in his chest of Jace searching him out through their bond to stop.

Saying this much to Jace was one thing. Facing up to him from now on … would be, would always be another entirely.

Alec knew that Jace knew, even if he had never said anything about it, that Izzy and Clary and pretty much everyone knew … just ‘HOW defective I am’, how twisted and wrong, and that there had never been and NEVER would be room in any institute on the globe for someone like him. Tolerated, maybe. Not accepted. Not loved.

Alec swallows hard at the thought, is not wondering for the first time whether … ‘… anyone would have ever cared, if Valentine had only been threatening my kind of shadowhunter. Would anyone ever have cared enough … to even try and stop him?’

So the world is free of Valentine, and Alec is glad about that, for knowing his family, his siblings are save from that man. Over this decade of constant fighting little, however, has changed for Alec. His feelings caged, his body a prison.

He cannot ever see it change, any of it – still glamoured, curled up, crying, on the bare ground at the foot of a tree in some park he has never been before. Not for the first time he had felt like he was suffocating in those holy walls, every brick an unrelenting reminder ‘I don’t belong.’ He does no longer dare to try to, does not dare to choose one spot to return to, knows all too well, ‘… predictability is always what gets you caught, gets you caught off guard.’ He would never allow himself to be that weak. ‘Never again.’

Facing Jace, the next day, the three off them assigned to go out on patrol again, is hard. Is hard until Jace with one smile, a brief hug and a “Let’s do this” makes it easy, as if nothing has ever transpired between them. And Alec is grateful. And Alec detests it. The constantly ongoing humdrum of life. Pain and pretence. All of it.  
Sure, things have changed over the years, large and small. Jace’s moods, Izzy’s hair colour, several times. When Max had almost been killed, when their mother left their father, giving no reason to no one, taking a then 14 year-old Max with her, ‘I miss you so much little brother, haven’t seen you in far too long.’ Most of all, for Alec, when Izzy, his little sister had made head of the institute. He had been so proud of her, to her, he would always just be Alec. Even if he had no other love, would never know it, at least he had her love in his life. Losing her to her new position, welcoming Clary into Izzy’s old role as part of his little patrol crew had been hard, but he has worked, is working still on making it easier on everyone, hence his little talk to Jace the other day.

Still, it would be a lie to say Alec is fully focused that day out with Jace and Clary so when his back hits the ground the demon’s teeth sink into his chest and he feels the burn of that poison seeping into his bloodstream, pumped straight into his heart it somehow feels welcome. Maybe now ‘… maybe I’ll be allowed to just let go.’

When his eyes open again to the bright lights off the institute’s infirmary Alec knows he will not get off this easy. The stabbing pain in his heart when he tries to sit up, nevertheless, gives him hope he might soon be allowed to leave it all behind. He would not say it to his siblings faces, not ever, and maybe that is part of the problem, … but he has secretly harboured the thought for quite a while. Even though he could not possibly imagine what a so-called heaven could ever bring in comfort to someone like him. He is not allowed, is not supposed to be. Not in this life, not in the next. A mistake, a glitch, ‘… an abomination.’ So there is not even any point in this either … seeking death. Promising only more fear, more pain.

Another sharp, stabbing rush, like a punch to the chest sees Alec clutching his heart, body crashing onto the floor.

He looks down at his chest, through the tightly pulled bandage his heart is pumping out a dark grayish goo where nothing but red, vibrant blood should flow inside of him; looking as lifeless as he feels.

Someone is by his side in seconds and he finds himself lifted back up onto the narrow hospital bed. The last thing Alec hears is his father’s voice, clinically inquiring “What is wrong with him now?”

Alec’s last thought before the newly administered pain medication pulls him back under into another heavy-limbed drug daze is, ‘We both know what you think is wrong with me, father. What everyone thinks.’

What scares Alec most is that with each passing day he feels more and more ready to agree.

Maybe death might still be an escape after all, if from nothing else, then … from turning onto himself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there!  
> Thank you for the kind response to my first chapter.  
> The plan is to update each weekend once, hopefully like this time around even twice. Just so you know what to expect. I wish I could update every day instead, but you know, life and stuff keeps one from writing for far far faaar too long stretches of time.  
> Lovely and wonderful to have you along for the ride.  
> Really, thank you!  
> xo Vy

It takes a couple of days for Alec to be allowed to leave the infirmary, several infusions having cleared up his bloodstream. Still, no one can tell him where the actual medical issue began or ends.

  
Having walked down the first corridor, he hears the clacking of heels behind him before he feels strong arms wrap around his middle, “I am never letting you out on patrol again.”

Eyes falling closed, Alec smiles to himself, “Izzy.”

The pained moan that passes his lips as Alec turns and envelopes his sister in his arms does not escape her attention, “Alec! You’re not fully healed? Why did they let you go if you are not fully healed?” She is already reaching for his shirt’s hem, trying to lift it to inspect the wound for herself when Alec bats her hands away in protest.

“I’m well enough. They said there might be some lingering pain from the trace amounts of poison still left in my system but that I would be fine in a couple of days if I kept drinking this.” He holds up a small vitreous bottle, a clear liquid inside, on closer inspection revealing a slight bluish tinge.

“Clitoria Ternatea,” Izzy mumbles under her breath, “yes, that might do the trick. If it doesn’t,” her voice rises in volume again, her eyes lifting from the vial to meet Alec’s, “you need to go back in and ask for something stronger.”

“I’ll do that,” he mumbles, already turning to continue his path to his station when Izzy grabs him by the arm, causing him to look back at her.

“Alec. Promise me you will take care of yourself.”

Her imploring gaze has Alec swallow heavily, he hates lying to Izzy of all people, would hate even more having to hurt her by telling her he does not think he is worth it. So he thinks of the happiest thought he can muster, gives her his best attempt at a smile, nods his head before he turns, and marches on.

“I love you,” Izzy shouts after him.

It is so like his sister to not give a damn about appearing the stoic leader type he had always felt he had to aim for. If you never speak all that much to begin with no one will ever expect you to speak about yourself at all. ‘Safety in stoic silence,’ Alec’s throat closing, he attempts to clear it before looking once more back over his shoulder at his sister, smile this time almost reaching his eyes, almost … real, his words no less sincere for the lack of it, “I love you, too, Izzy.”

After that, things almost go back to normal. Not that that is a state Alec is in any way longing for, fond off. It just is what it is. Patrol – debrief – sleep. Training – patrol – sleep – debrief. Patrol – debrief – training – sleep.  
All throughout it Alec keeps swallowing his feelings and the salty medicine down, and does not tell a soul that his aim is not what it usually is, or how pain sometimes shoots down his left side, how he feels dizzy a lot, too much of the time for it to be part of him healing.

When he collapses on the training room floor some days later, during a more vigorous session, Izzy having to carry her utterly out of it brother back to the infirmary, no one knows WHAT to think.

This time around, on the insistence of the head of the institute the testing is much more thorough.  
The results come back inconclusive. Only the slightest traces of poison still around, amounts that were to be expected this shortly after the attack itself.

So Izzy herself does another round of testing, and another. Still, finding … nothing. She inspects the wound over a couple of days, again and again, finds that it is not healing at the speed it should. That is when Robert Lightwood gets involved.

“I know something we have not tried yet. Come with me.”

It is not that long a walk, Alec, however, cannot remember ever having been in this part of town. Not that most of their patrols lead them anywhere but down dark alleyways that could be pretty much anywhere in the world.  
Several sets of stairs, two long corridors, and a longer elevator ride later he stands beside his father in a to Alec’s taste far too brightly lit hallway, in front of what looks like a dark brown, heavy wooden door, which swings open only a cold second after his father has rung the bell.

What surprises Alec most about the much more comfortingly lit space he steps into is that there is no one there for the first meters that his father storms into the place, he himself tentatively following after. It is as if his father has been waiting to do this, whatever exactly it will turn out to be, for … for a really long time. This realization alone makes Alec’s nerves flare up again, ‘What are we doing here?’ Or maybe rather ‘What are we here to do?’

Alec, still just following his father’s steps rounds a corner. There at a heavy oaken desk in the middle of a large room sits a man in between voluminous books – many of them wide open, brightly coloured vials, and jars full of things half of which Alec would have no idea how to even begin to describe.  
The man, to Alec, looks surprised when he finally looks up at the two people he let in and asks, “What can I do for you, shadowhunters?”

“Magnus Bane.” Alec hears his father’s voice boom, utterly too composed to not feel cold. It is a tone Alec is used to be addressed in so he really hardly takes note of it at first. What Alec does notice, however, is Magnus Bane’s response to this unwelcoming address. Whoever this man is, clearly he is not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner.

Eyebrows raised he steps closer to the two shadowhunters, “I believe it is you who is asking for my services, so I expect you to treat me with the due respect.”

Alec can tell that his father is not impressed by the way his nostrils flare, and he is clearly gritting his teeth, plastering on a fake smile in the next second that Alec is all too painfully familiar with as well. Alec shrinks utterly back into himself, lowering his gaze to the floor as his father raises his voice to bark out his demand.

“This is my son. Put him right.”

Magnus’s eyebrows raise further, arms now locking in wordless protest in front of his body, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Robert barks again, stubbornly holding Magnus’s gaze, starting to sound like a petulant child.

“I don’t do business with brutes.” Magnus simply states as a matter of fact and turns back to his previous occupation.

Alec, chancing a glance at his father, sees him ball his hands into fists at his sides before attempting a new approach in a calmer voice. A tone making Alec’s skin crawl in its unfamiliarity a dozen times more.

“Apologies. I fear for my son’s wellbeing. Please reconsider my request. He was hurt in a demon attack. There appear to be some persistent remnants of the poison to have ingrained themselves in his system in a way that makes it a matter beyond our shadowhunter means to extract it. I have heard stories of the things a warlock’s magic can accomplish.”

When Magnus looks up again, his eyes only briefly flicker to the man who just spoke, his gaze getting hung up, quickly, on the dumbstruck expression on the younger shadowhunter’s pale face. Clearly Magnus himself is not the only one surprised at the sudden shift in the older man’s demeanour. ‘A topic for another time,’ Magnus thinks, asks, “How long ago did this attack take place?”

Magnus watches as the older man shoots his son a look that is more of a command than a request to engage in the conversation.

“Eight days.”

Magnus is struck by how hesitant, how young the man, by the looks of him in his late twenties or early thirties really sounds. He does not seem to be enjoying the older man’s company any more than Magnus himself.  
“Please, come over here, have a seat.” It is the first time Alec sees the man, he now knows to be a warlock, smile. It is a fluent motion, soft and warm, when he gestures with his hands, begging Alec closer.

Alec obediently makes his way over to the couch, sits down, unsure eyes imploringly looking up at the warlock.

“I presume the wound has not fully healed?”

Alec nods.

Magnus crouches down in front of Alec so they are on eye-level, before asking, “May I take a look?”

Alec’s answer sounds weirdly timid to Magnus’s ears. “Yeah, yes.”

“For the angel’s sake take off your shirt, Alec!”

Eyes cast to the floor, Alec starts to nervously unbutton his shirt when calm soft hands settle on his unsteady ones. “You don’t have to.”

“He said ….” Alec starts weakly.

“Does not matter one bit, what he said,” Magnus replies softly to Alec then raising his voice straightens his body back out to its full imposing height, turns to face the older shadowhunter and says, “You can leave.”

“We haven’t talked payment, yet,” Robert counters.

“My bills always find their way to their rightful owners, don’t you worry about that.”

Robert just nods in answer, but makes no move to leave.

Not in a mood for games tonight, walking towards the man, Magnus asks, “What do you really want from me?” The hard gaze meeting Magnus’s eyes full on at that has Magnus falter in his stride.

“As I said, I expect you to put him,” Robert nods towards where Alec is watching them from the couch, “right!”

“And I have assured you I will do my very best to remove all traces of poison left in his system.” With a sinking feeling in his stomach, hoping against his better judgement Magnus tags on, “… or is there something else?”

Turning to the young man himself he asks, “Alexander, is it?”

Meeting Magnus eyes, Alec nods.

“Alexander, is there something else you’ve come here for?”

But before Alec can answer in any way his father cuts in, again, Magnus’s head jerking back into Robert’s direction at the cutting harshness of his words, and Magnus has to fight down his magic from lashing out at the man, right there and then, “As I said, I expect you to put him right. Rid him of all poisonous, unnatural … elements. Straight. Set him straight.”

Magnus is not one to pass judgement lightly, has further learned, over centuries, to keep his emotional impulses in check, but looking back and forth between this father and his son, he feels nothing but burning anger and old pain rise in him.

Pushing it all way down and aside he nods to Robert, “Very well. You can leave. The rest of my business is with Alexander here alone.”

Eyes a sharp line narrowed in scepticism Robert asks, “Do we understand each other?”

Magnus opens a portal, “Oh, I assure you, I understand you perfectly well.” The faster that man out of his apartment the better, says through a fake smile of his own, not that Robert would take note of that, too used to being at their receiving end, “Pleasure doing business with you, please see this shortcut back to your New York institute as a little extra something.” ‘My attempt to not strangle you on the spot.’

As Robert steps toward the portal Magnus chances a glance at the young man still sitting on his couch, gaze fixed to the floor, frozen in place.

“When can I expect results?” Robert inquires before taking the final step.

“I will do a first assessment with your son today and let you know how we best proceed with the treatment.

“Very well,” Robert replies vanishing through the portal without another look at Alec, clearly hoping to see this son … never again.


	3. Chapter 3

Magnus takes hurried strides over to the couch as soon as the portal has folded in on itself, the pathway from his apartment to the New York institute gone, as if it had never been there at all, Robert with it.

  
The warlock had hoped for the young man on his couch to relax a little once his father has been removed from the situation, but he still has to watch Alec flinch sharply at the feel of the dip of the couch as Magnus sits down next to him. And Magnus has to remind himself that he is a complete stranger to the other man, Alexander knowing nothing of Magnus’s intentions.

  
‘For all you know I am about to tear your core into pieces, rearrange them to turn you into your father’s perfect little toy soldier. Turn you into the son he thinks he deserves.’ Magnus’s eyes warily scan the man in front of him, a stranger for all intents and purposes, and yet … Magnus is sure of one crucial thing already, ‘Your father is right in one aspect, certainly. In one aspect alone. He does not deserve you.’ Magnus wishes saying these words out loud to Alexander here would fix everything. He is all too painfully aware that it will not … not ever. So, he keeps them in his thoughts.

  
Alec, eyes still fixed to the floor, can, nevertheless, sense the warlock’s gaze on him.

  
“Alexander?”

Alec gives a single jagged nod of acknowledgement.

“Your father made quite clear what he wants. … I have to ask … is it your wish?”

‘Alec will do as he is ordered.’

Magnus cannot imagine Alec’s answer to be yes, not in a million years.

‘Alec will do as he is ordered.’

Magnus watches on as the young man pulls a sharp shaking breath into his lungs.

‘Alec will do as he is ordered.’

Lungs straining with the hastily taken breath pulled too deep with too much force, Alec’s chest aches with so much more than the recent wound. In seconds he is half doubled over, hands bracing themselves against his knees, fingers digging harsh, attempting to pull the unbearable pain from his chest and shift it into other body parts, as he simultaneously starts to try and tug more air into his lungs, knowing it should belong there. He feels his airway closing up instead, feels his eyes fill with a burning wetness.

“Alexander?” Magnus’s voice has gone so impossibly soft, Alec thinks he has never heard anyone’s voice directed at himself ‘with such …, with so much …’ he cannot name it, nor recognize it as tenderness, care and concern oozing from it. It hurts beyond all measure, how unfamiliar, how foreign, how strange this feels to him, … kindness. Alec might not be able to read the warlock, nor know of his exact motives for seemingly accepting his father’s business…, however, Alec’s every instinct is screaming at him ‘This man wants you no harm!’

It does not help ease his pent up anxiety and confusion.

Magnus’s left hand has halfway reached for one of Alec’s when Magnus freezes as Alec’s sad and frighteningly empty eyes find his, while Alec still attempts to bring his breathing back into his control.

‘Alec will do as he is ordered.’

Magnus sees agony flash behind these tearstained eyes opened wide in fright.

Voice strained with the same cutting pain, pushed down for far, far too long, now seeping through in uncontrollable gushes, Alec replies between harsh gasps, “Mostly, …, mostly, … I try … not to … think about … think about it.”

Gaze remaining open and soft Magnus imploringly whispers, “About what?”

Alec’s throat closes up completely. He could not take a single free of pain breath before. He can no longer breathe at all.

As his panic takes full hold of him Alec frantically pushes himself off the couch, practically throws himself at the doors leading out onto what looks like a spacious outdoor space.

Magnus is unsure if Alec is trying to get outside or simply looking for hold as he watches Alec grab for a handle of one of the doors, his whole body starting to tremble.

No part of Alec can shake the sickening feeling contained within the thought of all he has already lost living his life not really at all … as his. Alec senses the warlock, Magnus, walk up beside him. Slow, seemingly utterly composed, in control ‘… of everything.’ And a bout of inexplicable jealously adds itself, unwanted, unasked for, to the heap of feelings Alec finds himself bearing, being buried under alive.

“You try not to think about what, Alexander?”

As a gentle hand follows those softly spoken words and comes to rest against the spot between Alec’s shoulder blades, Alec doubles fully over, his knees breaking his fall. Chest heaving, forehead resting against cool glass, a focal point, he sobs out his answer, “Love.” He pleads with himself, “I try … I try, not to …. I try.”

Magnus knows he is overstepping a myriad of invisible, unspoken boundaries between them, but he cannot find it in himself to not, is already on his knees beside the other man, pulls Alexander into an embrace on the ground in front of those balcony doors that open onto a world safer than it used to be, for everyone, but with no more of a place in it for the two beings holding on to each other on this living room floor.

Feeling Alec return his embrace Magnus resolves to hold on, does.

Dawn is already starting to creep into the night sky when Magnus speaks again, still holding Alec close, the two of them resting with their backs against the glass doors by now. “Where did that demon wound you? You reached for your shirt earlier when I asked.”

It feels like almost too familiar a question, Magnus feeling like somehow he should take it back, knows he cannot. Not really. ‘No take backs in life. Well, hardly ever,’ not even for a considerably powerful warlock.

“Above my heart. A bite. That’s why the poison is so hard to get fully out of my system, maybe? It spread fast, pumped everywhere.”

“That’s a possibility,” Magnus says moving to get up, noticing Alec’s unbridled discomfort. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry. Nothing.”

“Alexander, don’t make them small,” Magnus hesitates on his next words, “… your feelings. Other people do that too much already … to all of us.”

Alec sucks in a shaky breath before letting it escape his lips again with a pained sigh, “It’s …, it has been forever since anyone has held me like that. I, I’m, I’m sorry.”

The man still kneeling beside Alec, Magnus’s right hand comes to rest against one of Alec’s, trying to assure the other man’s undivided attention, “Hey.” He is uncertain if he has it, with Alec’s eyes firmly fixated on his lap, their hands, but needing to say it either way Magnus goes on, “Don’t ever, EVER, apologise for longing for something. Especially love.” A sudden flex of the hand under his reassuring him he was indeed heard.

Magnus gets back onto his feet, holds out the hand holding Alec’s a second ago for Alec to take.

As Alec reaches out, holds on and allows himself to be helped back onto his own two feet, Magnus does not miss the sharp intake of air, nor the chocked back whimpers following that Alec determinedly tries to pretend did not just escape him.

Magnus response is kept deliberately casual, but both men know Alec is anything but well. “Let’s return to a bit more comfortable seating area.” As if it had been but a mere moment they had just spent together on the living room floor … not half the night.

Before Alec can even sit down Magnus asks, “How bad is the pain really? I may not recently have had dealings with your kind, but I’m no stranger to your culture. I know how important a part of your life it is to put on a brave face.”

Magnus gets to watch the conflicted feelings play out in Alec’s lips fluttering to form words that never come to be.

“It’s important that you are honest with me here. Otherwise,” Magnus takes a deep breath himself now, “… otherwise it will be impossible for me to actually truly help.” The unspoken ‘And I really, truly want to,’ hanging between them.

Alec swallows, lets go of a held down breath, “It’s hard to breath a lot of the time, the pain comes in stabs to my chest. It feels like a hot, electric blade is cutting slowly into my heart before the pain spikes around my body, mostly old battle wounds flaring up again with pain.”

Magnus steps closer to Alec again, “Thank you.”

Alec can sense the warlock hesitate before he speaks his next words, and Alec wonders what the warlock himself might be afraid of until he hears them and understands.

“I will need to examine you more closely, Alexander.”

‘He is afraid of scaring me.’ “Oh.” Alec is unsure how Magnus expects him to react. “I can get …, should I get … undressed?”

Magnus’s sudden smile takes Alec by surprise, pure amusement sparkling from it that has the corners of Alec’s mouth twitch up too on instinct. Trust does funny things to you.

“What?” Alec asks, surprised by the smile infusing his voice.

“Your people and their primitive ways,” Magnus comments still clearly amused. “No,” Magnus goes on then, “although I am sure I would enjoy the sight.”

Alec knows he must be imagining things. ‘There is no way he just said what I heard.’

Magnus unable to help himself from savouring the beautifully confused and simultaneously exhilarated expression of the young man opposite him discovering how much they …share, adds, “Absolutely no need for you to put on a show for me.”

‘Okay, he definitely said THAT.’

Experiencing kindness is one thing, being let in so far that you can feel a sense of kinship already with a person still so new to you … is something different altogether.

Magnus expression is explicitly serious when he says, “There are so many reasons I would never do to anyone what your father asked of me. This,” Magnus continues, gesturing with a flourishing movement along his own body, “is just one of them.”

Magnus does not miss how Alec’s smile brightens, before revealing an equally stunned and relieved expression beneath. Then the surprise is slowly overtaken by something Magnus cannot name, but as he looks away for a moment to collect his own thoughts – a surprisingly difficult task while looking into Alec’s eyes – he thinks he hears a quieted whisper – “I’m glad it is.”

He might also just have imagined this, so he does not comment on it any further.

Alec watches as Magnus reaches for his shirtsleeves and undoes the buttons there, rolling the sleeves halfway up his arms.

He flexes his fingers, “All I need for you to do is place your palms against mine.”

“Um?”

Magnus has to smile again, fondly, at Alec still being distracted by so little a thing as his few words. Then again, ‘Nothing of that did feel small to you? Did it?’ Magnus reminds himself.

“The poison, I’ll look for it with a specific method. I’ll send a pulse of my magic through your system. Think of it as … an echo-sounder. My magic searching your system for traces of substances that do not belong, should not be there at all. A friend of mine uses this magic to help identify if there are any cancerous cells in a patient’s body.”

Magnus watches on as the shadowhunter’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, and Alec shakes out his limbs, before he, facing Magnus, holds up his hands, “Okay, yes, I can do that,” Alec’s eyes falling shut again, fluttering to reopen as nothing happens yet for a second more.

Magnus smiles encouragingly at him, hums, “Brilliant.” He flexes his ringed fingers once more before he places his palms against Alec’s.

Magnus closes his eyes, Alec following suit.

Alec feels a slight, warming spark softly wash through him, and within seconds it is gone, ebbed away. He feels an instant sense of loss. Reopening his eyes Alec is met with a deeply frowning face, taking away his attention from the still lingering warming tingle inside of him. “Magnus? What’s wrong with me?”

Magnus does not answer straightaway, holds up a finger as if to say, wait one moment.

Alec hears the clinking of bottles and the questioning hum of Magnus’s voice as he watches the warlock rummage through an even larger collection of vials, most smaller in size than the ones out in the open, just a moment ago still hidden away in a newly opened up cupboard, looking utterly unspectacular from the outside, but once opened up…, then again ‘That must be the whole point. Diverting attention,’ Alec thinks. He makes a mental note to suggest a redesign of some corners of the institute in this way to his sister. ‘Wow, I really cannot turn it off.’

Alec is still sunken in his thoughts when he feels the cold glass of a vial pressed into his hand, hears, “Drink this.”

Only when the vitreous flask is already touching his lips, the tangy taste on his tongue, do the bitter words even replay in his head, and he has to swallow that much harder to get the substance to take the pathway down his throat, ‘Alec will do as he is ordered.’

Magnus seeing the sudden flash of distress on Alec’s face adds, “Hey, it’s nothing unpleasant, I promise.”

Alec just nods, keeps swallowing.

“Step back from me for a moment, please.”

Alec takes as requested a couple of steps back, Magnus walking around him to inspect the whole of the man from every angle. “Yes, as I thought.”

“What had you thought?”

Alec sounds tired and restless, and Magnus has no intention of straining the man’s nerves, “There’s no poison whatsoever left in your system.”

“But the p…” Alec stops himself mid-word.

Magnus steps closer to Alec again, “… pain? You can say it, please, allow yourself to feel it. There is so much harm in pretending. You cannot …, one cannot heal that way. Please, believe me.” He cannot bring himself to admit it out loud, can neither help the thought from occurring, ‘For I know far too well.’

Alec shakes his head at himself.

“Your pain, Alexander, your crippling pain is very real.”

Alec keeps shaking his head, “But you just said there was no reason ….”

Magnus steps even closer, places to Alec’s surprise a hand over Alec’s heart and pressing his palm protectively against it whispers softly, “No. No, I said there is no poison.”

“But the …, but the …,” Alec tries to protest, insist, keep up the pretence in his mind, the barriers in place, the doors and windows barricaded. But he cannot. He cannot even lie to this stranger before him, not to himself anymore, “the poison was, the poison, the the ….” Instead he crouches down on the floor, curled up into himself breaks out into sobs. Whispers in still supressed distress, “I can’t, I can’t … please make it go, make it go away. Just take it, take it all, my father is right, I shouldn’t be feeling this. He is right.”


	4. Chapter 4

Magnus, chest aching, sits down next to “… Alexander.”

  
Alec cannot bring himself to react, but the sobbing rapidly stops when Alec hears Magnus’s next words.

Magnus does not want to think let alone say any of this out loud ‘But … you seem to need to hear it.’ So, with a frustrated sigh Magnus says, “Your father is right. He has done some research, somewhere, somehow; but either he did not read the fine print or he does not care.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are spells and potions and all sorts of things … to change people. That is the point, however, you CHANGE them.”

“Change them how?”

“They are never again the person, the personality they were before. And for some … for some that is a saving grace. Imagine someone exposes you to drugs or alcohol as a child, maybe as a baby or before you are even born. And you are forced into existing with some traits that will put you at risk of …, even after you have been put through a properly supervised detox, …of developing … taking a liking to similar substances that are only going to take you away from you, make you destroy yourself. Imagine you’re suffering from an eating disorder and cannot find your way back out, no matter how hard you try to stop …hurting yourself. There are too many ways to count in which you can hurt yourself. Maybe you don’t even know at all that you’re doing it. Alexander, you’re a soldier, you know how war leaves people, men and women, children, in pieces they cannot reconcile.”

Magnus pauses to give Alec a moment to process, to respond.

Alec stays silent.

Eventually Magnus adds, “I can help people. To some extent at least.”

Alec sounds almost ashamed in his response, “These are the people your potions and spells are for.”

Magnus sounds painfully sad in his answer, ”Yes.”

Alec’s voice quivers, “I’m not one of them?”

It breaks Magnus’s heart to hear Alec phrase what should be a clear statement as a question. It leaves him with all the more of a desire to drive his point home. “I would not be helping you. I would be taking you away from you, putting you out of your own reach. Don’t ask me to disfigure you, the person you are.”

With a deep frown, Alec bites down hard on his lower lip.

Magnus knows the temptation to run from yourself, especially when it involves running from pain no one can bare forever silently. So there are choices, there always are. And they need to be made. Plenty are made for the wrong reasons, all the time.

“Alexander, having been made to suffer by others for who you are is not the same as being inherently ill, or having a genetic predisposition to self-harming behaviour, or suffering from PTSD of a sort. I know they have all worked ridiculously hard to make you believe YOU are the problem. When really … they are. Their narrow minds and widespread, deep rooted, rigid traditions. Just because they agree with each other and have managed to isolate you to a degree that you cannot help but think you’re the problem does not mean they are right, or what they think holds truth.”

Alec swallows his overwhelming feelings down, says, “I can’t find myself anymore, sometimes. Inbetween … everything. I’m supposed to be … all these things.”

“Don’t let them make you feel less anymore, just for not feeling the same way, thinking the same thoughts. There are plenty more like you, Alexander. I know, it’s both a hopeful and a horrifying thought, because you know how painful they have made it for you to even try and be …you. How much they take take take every day; from … your everyday.”

Alec rubs some unshed tears out of his eyes, sitting there, nodding.

“I know it can’t mean much, coming from me, we hardly know each other, but, Alexander, no part of you that I’ve seen tonight … is wrong. You must be exhausted, fighting off love, barely daring to think of it.”

Alec pushes a hand through his hair, head hanging, “Who’d I even love? There, … I, … no one. There’s no one.”

  
“You’re not no one. Start with him. He seems quite keen on the idea of being loved.” A thought adds itself in Magnus’s mind, it feels too far reaching to say, too early for Alec to hear … just yet, ‘And just imagine how much it will irritate your father to see you happy … one day.’

Magnus is surprised when Alec lifts his head and looks over at him, gaze imploring already before he even speaks.

“Can you show me?”

“Sorry?” Magnus replies, not really feeling able to follow, unwilling to assume.

“If I wanted to be like you, more like you, … bold, unafraid, open, would you show me … how?”

“More like me?” Magnus cannot remember one time in his long life when someone had asked him to help him do that. Not many see him in this light. Least of all … shadowhunters. So he simply gives the most honest answer he can find in him, “I wouldn’t know where to start. And I’m afraid of many things.”

“That makes two of us then,” Alec replies, offering up a sad smile.

This time it is Alec, who gets back to his feet first, offers Magnus a hand to take.

Magnus does, and they stand awkwardly for a moment.

“Do you want me to leave?”

Magnus runs a reassuring hand down along Alec’s right arm, shaking his head replies, “It’s not that I want you to, but I’m afraid there is no way for me to have you stay if you don’t want to raise suspicions. Even with someone as blind to the world as your father.”

Alec swallows hard at the reminder of the outside world, the people in it.

They speak at the same time when they speak next.

“Can I come back?”

“How would you like to go on?”

Magnus’s smile is wide, “Your company would be my pleasure.”

“I’d love that.” Alec bites his lower lip, attempting to hide his shy smile. Thinks, ‘A place to go, … to be me. Not having to hide ….’

Beneath the smile, Magnus can see the exhaustion at this hour ingrained deeply in Alec’s features. So, with a swirl of his hand he opens up another portal – a necessary, yet unwanted reminder of the other person that had been in his apartment tonight.

“What shall we tell your father?”

Alec shakes his head at himself, tone solemn, it reminds Magnus of a eulogy being delivered, half sincere, half a clear artificial construct, aimed to please, as Alec says the words as if he is speaking them to Robert already, “I’m a severe case, almost beyond cure. Mr. Bane said I have to come in several times a week if I want any hope of being …” Alec stumbles through the next words “… healed from my … confusions.”

“Confusions?” Magnus finds his mind hung up on the word choice for a moment. The conviction Alec can bring to these words is a stern reminder how the world he had to grow up in, has to live in, sees him, … them. So Magnus moves forward fast, unwilling to end the night in so sad a tone, “I’d be glad to have you any day, every day you choose.”

Alec cannot quite make the topical jump that fast, “My father will say you are only hungry for his money.”

Magnus smirks at Alec, “I can wholeheartedly assure you, none of me is hungry for any part of your father.”

Alec is standing stunned, just … openly stares, eventually lets out an exasperated puff of air, an incredulous smile on his face.

Magnus cannot help but smile himself at the man’s reaction. Stepping forward into Alec’s personal space Magnus reaches out and takes one of Alec’s hands in between his, a warm grounding presence to Alec. “I’ll take his money and pour it into a worthwhile cause, …if you don’t mind.”

“Not one bit.” It feels calming just how easy the words leave his mouth. Being yourself, unforced, ‘… brand new.’ Alec feels almost silly for having this thought, this feeling. He knows it to be unlikely to last.

“I work from home, mostly mixing potions for a multitude of clients, these days. Some spell work, sometimes, that might take me all sorts of places; but I usually know about those journeys some time in advance. What I’m trying to say is … I am here, each night, unless you hear otherwise from me. You decide whether you want to be here … with me. I won’t take it personal if you decide against it.”

“I won’t,” Alec is so quick to answer he can watch that smile reappear on Magnus’s lips that speaks of nothing but genuine amusement. Alec cannot regret his words, not in the wake of such a lovely response. It causes the need to say it out loud to rise in him, “I will be here.”

When Alec meets Magnus’s gaze again, Magnus, to Alec’s delight, is still smiling, it feels absurd to be proud, but Alec cannot help it, does not want to stop the thought, the warm feeling attached to it, ‘I did that.’

Magnus slowly steps away from the portal glowing behind him, “See you tomorrow then, Alexander. Go now, try and get some sleep.”

“Thank you, I…, I … .”

“No need. I know. And I meant it, I’m looking forward to your company. Not just because my work here can get quite lonely. It feels meaningful to be around someone again, right, in a way that I thought it could … not ever again.”

“Good night,” Alec says softly, words far too simple for his emotions in this moment.

As he turns and looks back through the portal he has just stepped through he sees Magnus mouth the same. He does not want to look away. Watches the portal shimmer and close.

Alec keeps wondering about Magnus’s last words as he stands alone on the grass in front of the still brightly lit institute, the night barely past. He quietly marvels at the rise of the sun in the east, in thought still in a place filled with warmth, and vials … and a warlock. All situated not that long of a walk away from here. Hope.

Alec allows one hand to wander up over his chest, coming to rest where Magnus’s had earlier steadied his frantically beating heart – the warlock still very much present, with him. Alec prays this feeling will last, and begins to count the hours until he can be himself around someone again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never intended to disappear for a month. Being able to be with you guys again, for you guys, is ... beyond. My life is chaos and pain for far too large a part, with too much past probably will be always on some level. This, you, ... that is a big part of my current happy place. My current me place. It could not ever be without you being here. I guess what I'm trying to say is, thank you for being still here and hello to those of you joining us and this story. I aim to be back each weekend again with a new chapter.  
> Also I have to give a TRIGGER WARNING for SELF-HARM for this chapter and many chapters to come, I think. I know to me it is therapeutic writing about it, and I know readers who have told me before that it can be just that for them too when they read about it. Just in case you are different there and need to stay away from this content ... I do totally get that too and wish you only the best.  
> xo Vy

It is the late afternoon, Alec standing by his window watching the teenaged future parabatai in training in the courtyard below. They arrived this morning, have been sent here to train for some weeks at least at an institute in which a set of shadowhunters fighting alongside as parabatai is active. They are here to watch ‘… Jace and me.’ Alec heaves a sigh, the last thing he currently needs is more eyes on him. But it is not like he has a choice in the matter. ‘Maybe I can get out of it by ….’  
  
A knock at his door startles him out of his thoughts on how to avoid the young boys and girls.  
  
His stomach churns as he opens his mouth to answer, hoping, praying it will be anyone but his father. “Yes?”  
  
The door is pushed open, Alec heaves a big breath of relief when Izzy's face comes into view. He feels the sudden, overwhelming panic a moment ago still dominating his insides subside back into the far corners of his mind. Still there, always there, of course, but manageable, ... mostly. Now he is able to refocus on the simple fact that he had already talked to his father upon return and really his father is painfully reliable in that way, ‘If there’s no reason, no, if he thinks there’s no reason to care and show up … he won’t.’  
  
Alec tries to relax deeper into the safety of that knowledge, is torn from the attempt as Izzy closes the door behind her and strides over to sit on Alec’s bed, legs crossing as she pointedly directs her gaze to where Alec is still standing by the one and only window in his sparse room.  
  
“Where’d he take you last night?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
Her tone is friendly but firm, “Our father dearest, where did he drag you off to?”  
  
What Alec does next has nothing to do with him not trusting his sister, and everything to do with him not being ready.  
  
“He knows someone, a doctor who specializes in poisons, and father thought he might be able to help me recover fully.”  
  
The surprise on Izzy’s face is unmistakeable. It is mixed in with excitement, “Did it work?”  
  
Alec sits down next to her, says in as steady a voice as he can, “Yes.”  
  
Izzy throws herself at Alec with a bright smile, pulls him into a hug that Alec finds hard to stomach, but not as hard as her next words, “You do look better.”  
  
‘I’m not.’ Alec knows it is not ignorance at all but his sister’s hopeful, wishful thinking. He has to put his everything into not wincing or flinching away, 'It's all a lie.' Izzy would instantly pick up on the slightest pain response, so be bites it all back.  
  
Then? Well, then he silently counts through random numbers, utterly out of order. By the time he has tricked his brain into bearing that pain, both physical and psychological, Izzy is letting go again. The look she finds on his face … steady.  
  
She huffs out a breath, shakes her head.  
  
“What?” Alec asks, fearful she might still have picked up on something after all, despite his best efforts.  
  
He knows all too well, his sister is no fool. Jace hears and sees only what he wants to, even through their bond - it seems to Alec at least. Izzy and Alec himself are different, often cannot help look beyond the surface. Alec has often wondered why that is, suffered for it.  
  
Izzy’s surprised tone cuts through to him, “He finally was good for something.”  
  
At that Alec has to bite back a whole different kind of pain. The thought of the whole truth making his chest tighten, panic build itself up in the forefront of his mind, impossible to ignore or push aside.  
  
One more look at him now and Izzy will be mere moments away from making him, so he pushes down harder on his emotions.  
  
A shrill sound suddenly pierces both their ears.  
  
Izzy throws her hands in the air as she jumps up, janks back open the door and storms out of the room, already shouting down the corridor, “Oh for the angel’s sake! Can I not ONCE get five minutes to myself around here?”  
  
Alec has never felt this grateful for an alarm going off in the institute’s halls in his life.  
  
He gets up on shaky legs and slowly makes his way to the door, turns the key in its lock. Shuts that world out. None of that is going to be enough to calm any part of him. His thoughts and emotions are twisted to their breaking point already.  
  
Control is a luxury Alec cannot afford if he wants to stay in one piece. Physically. Mentally. He has learned as much over painful, tormenting years.  
  
'If you insist on staying in control the pressure building inside will break you in a much more lasting way than you embracing it, riding the wave no matter how unpleasant.' It is what Alec truly believes to be true. Meaning ... it is all he has to go by. For better. For worse.  
  
He has never found any of what he believes he has to do next pleasant, ‘Necessary. It’s necessary. I have to.’  
  
Alec tries to focus on the payoff, the calm, no matter how artificially claimed, how short-living … and reaches for his stele.  
  
It is a dry whisper, cracking, “… the only … out is through.”  
  
At this point, after 17years of it, it is as much a routine as patrol and his training. No one has ever asked him whether he wants to train that hard, whether he wants to go on patrol. It is what he does, what one does … as a shadowhunter.  
  
Alec’s body, his next actions, to an onlooker unnervingly calm, are beyond everything composed. That is how you get away with something like this for nearly two decades already.  
  
In the early days, as a young boy, Alec had sometimes sat there after, crying, emotions broken open, wishing someone … there was someone who could be bothered to look beneath that armour of the efficient fighter, the good student, the quiet, obedient boy.  
  
The only person who had ever called him out on being far too obedient for his own good was … “Jace,” Alec whispers. Alec feels certain he knows why he can hide this even from his parabatai. ‘As long as you have known me, as long as we have been connected … this has always been a part of me.’ It is a common place, common pain … that Jace cannot pick up on.  
  
Feelings more than thoughts swirling in his mind, Alec sits down on the floor, back against the wall and lets his breath stutter, the tears come and his thoughts fly into a rampage. ‘Oblivion ... might be nice. Breathing hurts, HUUURTS! Just being allowed to stop …. I’m not …. I’m tired. So tired. Letting go …, just let me LET! ME! let go of the pain, just let me … let me ….’  
  
He hiccups a sob. His insights screaming themselves raw, something clawing at him from his insides out, Alec pulls off his washed-out T-shirt, his black sweatpants. The cold stone against his back, the smooth black marble of the floor beneath him, Alec stills for a breath, two. Sitting there in only his dark green boxer briefs he pushes them further up his thighs, balls his fists in the fabric, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay. I will feel better after. I will!’  
  
All he needs is a sharp edge, and why not use the instrument given to him by the people who are making him torture himself anyway.  
  
His thigh quivers and Alec flinches with the first too deep cut, they all are, never feel it to him, ‘… deeper!’  
  
In the beginning at 14, it had only been shallow lines, inexperience making the strokes of his hand hesitant. Alec is highly experienced with his stele now. Keeps going deeper and deeper. The instrument was never meant to harm …. But like all things made in the presence of that thought … who is to stop you, really. It is not like anyone feels responsible for what Alec has to go through.   
  
‘I’m a grown man – I’m to take care of myself.’  
  
Alec does, … the only way he knows how.  
  
After, Alec crawls up on his bed, curls up on himself and closes his eyes, feels the blood still trickle and smear between his thighs.  
  
He never craves this.  
  
It is worse.  
  
He needs it.  
  
Alec wakes up hours later. Catching a glimpse of the time he heaves a first new breath free of tension. It is just about time to go and see Magnus again. He is relieved.  
  
He is terrified. ‘Maybe I got it all wrong. Am I even supposed to go back? Really? Maybe he just wanted to get rid of me last night. Maybe, maybe ….’  
  
His thoughts spin too fast and he has to escape them, this place, so, he deals with his sheets, his wounds, his clothes, and then, nervously, goes on his way.  
  
Alec tries to convince himself that it is exactly as he has had to tell his father.  
  
‘It’s a doctor’s appointment. It’s a doctor’s appointment.’  
  
Really, it is a mantra he has been replaying in his mind over and over ever since he left the institute and started his walk towards the warlock’s ‘…Magnus’s loft.’  
  
His thoughts do nothing to calm his nerves, and he finds himself in front of that somehow today much warmer, more inviting seeming front door to Magnus’s home far too soon. Not nearly soon enough.  
  
Magnus is disrupted in his reading by two soft knocks at his front door. Thankful to have a reason to stretch out his limbs after far too long a time at his desk he gets up.  
  
Alec grows more and more nervous as this time there are footsteps to be heard approaching.  
  
The door is swung wide open, and a friendly, truly inviting face meets his.  
  
Alec marvels at how one look from this man can instantly put him so much more at ease in his own skin. The nervousness, however, is still buzzing through him.  
  
Magnus gestures widely, wildly welcoming, for Alec to “Come on in, Alexander. Lovely to see you found your way back to my place.”  
  
Eyes cast down, Alec rubs the back of his neck as he steps in, “Hi. Hello. Yes, I …, it wasn’t, yeah. Hi,” finally looking up again.  
  
Magnus smiles warmly at the clearly eaten up by nerves man. He closes the front door, helps Alec out of his jacket and hangs it up for him.  
  
Alec feels like he is having an out of body experience when Magnus reaches for one of his hands, clasps it in a gesture that is meant to be comforting, echoing the previous night, in between his, “I’m really glad you came.”  
  
Magnus can literally feel Alec fighting the impulse - more than urge - to pull his hand away. Magnus feels compelled to make one thing clear, “Alexander, it’s okay. There’s no one here but us.”  
  
Alec’s breathe stutters, and he swallows down a heavy lump blocking his throat before he can reply, “I’m … it’s. … . In the institute this would be frowned upon. More. Criminal. They’d be staring at us now. Two men … holding hands. They’d tear ….” Alec cannot bring himself to finish the sentence, outrun by the thought.  
  
Alec watches pain twist Magnus’s features.  
  
Magnus cannot school his features into anything else, at meeting '... this man, who has made it through all those wars, all that fighting and yet … made to be afraid of himself, afraid to be anything but cold around others.’  
  
There and then, Magnus does not want to fight the impulse to really lace his fingers through Alec’s, and with a smirk, lean in and conspiratorially whisper into Alec’s ear, even though there is no one else around, “Let’s really give them something to look at.”  
  
Alec’s next breath is caught in a huffed smile, as much sadness as happiness. “Magnus.” His name turns into an adoring whisper, tagged onto another breath hitched in Alec’s chest as Magnus leans in and places a soft kiss to Alec’s forehead.  
  
Affection.  
  
'Comfort.' “Magnus.”  
  
“Alexander.” Magnus echoes brightly.  
  
“Thank you,” Alec whispers meeting Magnus’s eyes. “Thank you.” He does not say it but he thinks it, ‘For giving me this if ....’  
  
“You are very welcome.”  
  
Magnus, fingers still laced with Alec’s, tugs the man over to the couch they had sat on the previous night. And Alec marvels at the fact that Magnus is still holding his hand, sandwiched again between both of Magnus’s, resting over Alec’s knee.  
  
“So,” Magnus attempts a start. “Anything in particular you’d want to talk about tonight?”  
  
Alec heaves a deep breath, “I’m not sure. There’s …, I’m …. Gosh, by the angel, this is so much harder than I’d thought. I’m not used to talking about anything. We …, we shadowhunter, we’re ….”  
  
“Not famous for talking things out? All those wars and infighting, yes, I’d noticed those past centuries,” Magnus remarks.  
  
“Centuries? So, you have seen …a lot. In your lifetime I mean?” Alexander enquires curiously.  
  
Magnus’s smile widens, “That comes with the territory, but … I get a feeling you’re not referring to the wild parties I attended at Versailles?”  
  
Alec smiles, shakes his head. A simple “No.”  
  
“Have I ever met anyone like you? A shadowhunter, denying himself love, fighting himself more than any demon?”  
  
Alec cannot help the tears gathering in his eyes, averts his gaze from Magnus’s as they brim over, fall. When he can bring himself to answer it somehow comes out sounding like a question, “Yes?”  
  
“You know our two kinds histories, cultures. Your more recent kind for whatever reason tries to pretend they have always existed completely separate. They have not. So, yes, I have heard rumours, about suspicious banishments", Magnus hesitates, "and deaths - murders and suicides. But no, never have I sat down with someone like you.”  
  
“Oh,” Alec breathes, a defeated look in his eyes.  
  
Magnus cannot let that stand, “So you see, it is as much a privilege to me as it is to you.”   
  
Magnus briefly marvels at Alec’s genuine surprise at such a word choice.   
  
Then he goes on, “The dealings between shadowhunters and downworlders in recent centuries have been so minimal, I’m sure your father had no idea about what he was doing, brining you to me. Don’t take me wrong, I can and I have aided many creatures in altering their personalities, but … I would never do so without their explicit, repeated, and persisting wish. As I hope you already know at this point. The magic I choose to perform does not even come close to affecting a real change, certainly not lasting, unless it is with the explicit consent, freely given of the individual at its core.”  
  
“My father …,” Alec shakes his head at himself.  
  
“Thinks he owns the world?” Magnus offers.  
  
“Thinks he owns me,” Alec replies, eyes unfocused, voice flat.  
  
Magnus with a none too subtle squeeze to Alec’s hands decidedly answers, “Well, good then that we both know better.”  
  
Magnus loves to get to see that smile spread on Alec’s lips,” Alexander, you look so gorgeous when you smile.”  
  
Alec shivers, his surprised expression has Magnus’s own smile soften. “You are,” Magnus cups one of Alec’s cheeks, “Magnificent to behold. You know that, … right?”  
  
By the way Alec swallows and averts his eyes once more tonight, Magnus knows the answer without Alec having to say a single word.   
  
“Alexander, they are the fools, to not allow you to love freely. What a sight it must be, how pleasing to all your angels, to see you radiant with the utmost love.”  
  
Magnus watches Alec's features twist, feels Alec retract his hand, and sees him clutch his chest with it.   
  
The shadowhunter hums in strained pain as he presses the heel of it into his chest, right into the wound, attempting to stifle all emotion currently crashing in over him. … but it is overwhelming.  
  
Magnus rests his hand over Alec’s, attempts to relax it away from Alec’s chest, but this gesture has Alec tense up only further, breaths laboured heavily.  
  
“Alexander. Alexander!” Magnus tries to reach him, but Alec is too far gone, so Magnus does something he does not like to bring out into his repertoire and sends a small, light spark of magic, a relaxant through Alec’s system.  
  
As it takes effect Magnus helps Alec lay down, stretch his limbs out on the couch, “It’s okay, just breath, give it a moment.”  
  
Magnus, holding Alec’s hand in his again, drawing small circles into the skin adds in a hushed voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”  
  
Magnus watches Alec shake his head, “It's just …."   
  
"There is no JUST about any of this. It's okay to feel ..., anything, everything. I would be worried if you didn't feel anything about ... all of this."  
  
"... it hurts. It HURTS!" The tears keep flowing from the corners of his eyes, even as he is lying there. Fighting to breathe. "... denying myself. All they’ll never allow me to be, I … myself. I don’t even know how to think … so many things that should be … that I want to be. Be my everyday.”  
  
Magnus’s head is whirling with possibilities of aiding Alec.  
  
“I’m a shadowhunter. Our whole culture is based in that pride. Being brave. Accepting consequences. For our actions, our responsibilities. We’re told to be true. Just not … just … just ….”  
  
“Just not to yourself?”  
  
Alec nods in tears. “I’m wrong. So there cannot be any truth, any honour in what I am. So there is one choice. They give me, leave me ... with one choice. Denial.”  
  
“Who you love has nothing to do with what you are, a shadowhunter, a soldier. It has, however, everything to do with who you are. Who you can become. Love, loving yourself and others grants you power to achieve. They are afraid of you and your kind. But they do not get to decide who you are and what that means. You make the choice. And correct me if I’m wrong, but you are literally sick, sick of …, sick with hiding. Denying.”  
  
Alec feels like curling up on his side, burying his face in his hands and bawling his eyes out. It is not what he does.  
  
“What you’re saying is that … no amount of magic can fix,” Alec takes their joined hands and presses them to his heart “this.” Adds hesitantly, “… because there is nothing to fix.”  
  
Magnus nods, glad Alec shows understanding. “Only drown it. Drown you.”  
  
The stuttered breath Alec lets out is freeing, honest. “Okay.”  
  
“Okay?” Magnus asks. Not sure he understands.  
  
When Magnus feels Alec’s hand come up and he feels the shadowhunter caress his cheek with the utmost gentleness it is beginning to dawn on him.  
  
Magnus's hand is holding Alec’s hand still resting on his cheek when he says, “I’m not the solution.”  
  
Alec nods, “I know. I know that. I just really need …, I just really need!” There are tears in his voice. So much longing.  
  
“Yeah?” Magnus inquires softly. No teasing. No games.  
  
But Alec’s hand falls from Magnus's cheek in the next second, "Oh gosh," and he curls up on himself as he sits back, face hidden away in his hands now as he shakes his head at himself. “I’m truly sorry. I am so sorry!”  
  
Magnus refrains from touching Alec again, unsure if it would be welcome, remains sitting close to Alec, within touching distance as he goes on to say, “For what? For wanting to …, I don’t know, experience your sexuality?”  
  
“I’m so SO sorry!”  
  
“Alexander! Stop apologizing. You showed me some affection. There was nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with that. You didn’t force yourself onto me in any way. You’re free to ask me anything. I’m free to say no. As long as you, you know, actually ask for my consent in anything that … might happen, we are good. You’re not offending me.”  
  
“I don’t want to presume. I couldn’t,” Alec says.  
  
Then it dawns on Magnus …“I see warlocks are still somewhere on the curriculum in your schools. How did your father manage to forget that? Not into history I presume. Makes sense. With that bark of his who needs education to succeed in your world.”  
  
Alec after a brief glimpse averts his eyes again, clearly ashamed of his education in the matter.  
  
“Let me guess, deviant, lusting, generally sex craved beings, that will devour you heart and soul any chance they get. Obviously with the sole purpose of enlarging their power and circle of influence in the shadow world. Because all I dream about at night, when I’m not having one of my infamously wild sex orgies is to rule over all your kind.” Magnus shakes with laughter, shakes himself of the thought, quite vigorously, “Urgh, no. No, thank you. Alone the bureaucracy that would be even just hypothetically involved in that gives me a headache. To defile one of the great spoken word artists of this human age, Miss Brittany Spears: Me? Want a piece of that? No thank you!”  
  
Alec sits there, limbs unfolded, eyes bright, sporting an incredulous smile, in the next moment laughing, if only for a moment relaxed in a way Magnus has never seen him till now.   
  
“You really have given that thought, haven’t you.”  
  
“Well, if you are being told over centuries that that is your one and only apparent motivation for existing, you… develop an interest, start thinking about making it happen. Just in order to shut those shadowhunters up about it once and for all.”  
  
Magnus immensely enjoys the actual string of laughs escaping Alec’s vocal tract.  
  
“Wow,” Alec says. “You are really that amazingly outspoken.”  
  
Magnus beams widely, “One of my best features.”  
  
“And here I was, a bit, lot, worried you might just have put on that façade to be able to hold your own against my pushy father.”  
  
Magnus is reaching for Alec again then, hand coming to rest against one of his calves. “No, Alexander. That … was all me. I’ve been done hiding a long time ago.”  
  
Alec’s hand finds Magnus’s, resting on it squeezes it warmly, their eyes just holding one another. Alec’s hand holding on tightly to Magnus’s for the rest of their evening together.  
  
Magnus counts it as a win, ‘My shadowhunter coming out of his shell.’ Magnus himself is surprised beyond measure, catching himself with so intimate a thought.  
  
Alexander is relieved when that night, as he has to return to the institute, Magnus already having opened up a portal that will take Alexander home, the warlock does not step aside but toward him, pulls him into a hug that holds, allows Alec to catch his breath and pull himself further into the hug, deepening it.  
  
Both men find themselves longing for it to last.  
  
It does not.  
  
Not that night.


	6. Chapter 6

Magnus revels in the true warmth of a hug met with equal enthusiasm by Alexander upon opening the door to him the next night.  
  
Magnus had not been sure Alec would still show up at all as the late evening had passed on into the witching hour, midnight. Then, ten to one there had been a knock and Magnus had found his magic giddily reaching out its tendrils to feel for the energy, had found it to really be Alexander right there, in front of his apartment door.  
  
“Hi.”  
  
“Hi.”  
  
The hug is not accompanied by any words, and it feels so natural to want to spend each other this little comfort in this huge unpredictable world.  
  
Only having let go, closing the door while watching Alec take the last steps towards their usual meeting space, the couch, Magnus notices how Alec is slightly of balance.  
  
“Alexander, are you hurt?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Magnus squints his scepticism at Alec, “You’re limping.” It sounds almost like an accusation.  
  
Alec sits down with a tense breath, a supressed groan that speaks of deeper supressed pain. “It’s nothing.”  
  
Magnus openly glares at him, crossing his arms in front of his chest in clear protest, ‘The same way he had done with my father,’ Alec finds himself thinking, and really that is the thought that pushes him to break. “Fine, yes, I, it really is nothing though. I’ve had much worse.”  
  
“THAT does NOT mean it is nothing. MOST PROFOUNDLY infuriating argument in history in MY books: ‘I have been worse.’ Pain is not an emotion one should ever take to filing away under that heading. Certainly not consider it a common place to be in pain.”  
  
Magnus is already kneeling down in front of Alec when he adds, “Not as long as we’re friends.”  
  
Alec swallows down all thoughts at all the other kinds of pain he is feeling, keeping hidden from Magnus … and asks “Friends?”  
  
It sounds more than a little gloriously frightening to Alec’s ears.  
  
Magnus just smiles up at him, “I don’t just invite anyone to keep me daily company. …I … I trust you. I can’t explain it, … but I do.”  
  
Alec lets out a shocked breath, although Magnus cannot tell whether it is his words or Alec’s own realization, verbalised a second later, that has this effect on him, “I trust you too.”  
  
Magnus reaches for Alec’s hand, affectionately squeezes it, “So, show me then. Where’s that wound?”  
  
“It was really my own fault,” Alec starts, but Magnus’s expression instantly tells him that that is not the kind of talk a Magnus Bane will tolerate in his home. So Alec heaves a breath and starts over, “I … I went on mission again today for the first time, and I still carry around all that pain.”  
  
Magnus nods in sympathetic understanding.  
  
Alec sighs, “… so, my aim and focus are off. Today, I, it is really stupid, I felt that pang in my chest and my balance was … very off. And that one demon got me with his talon in my left upper thigh.”  
  
Magnus’s reaction is direct, uncomplicated, “Care for some warlock TLC? Free of charge.”  
  
Alec smiles, shaking his head at himself, he says, “That would be very much appreciated.” ‘How are things this simple with you? Things never are. Not for me.’  
  
Magnus nods, satisfied at having gotten through to Alec, “I’m afraid, since we’re talking about a fresh exterior wound this time it means taking of some of your clothing.”  
  
Alec nods, untying his shoelaces, then with a hiss getting back to his feet, stepping out of his shoes and getting out of his black trousers, left standing there in his dark blue shirt, dark green socks, and his black boxer-briefs, chewing his lower lip, left upper thigh wrapped in a glaringly white, clearly hastily tied bandage. “Our runes are really expected to heal most things.”  
  
“Please, sit back down. You look terribly pained on your feet,” Magnus instantly states, trying his best not to be impressed by Alec’s strong thighs. “I’ll have to take off that bandaging. But by the looks of that bloodstain slowly seeping through to its surface after all your moving around I’d say it would have needed changing quite soon anyway, so no loss there, right?”  
  
Alec adores how Magnus checks in with him at every step. “Yes. No problem,” Alec nods, trying to lean back and not show his discomfort to the man still kneeling in front of him.  
  
Magnus can tell Alec is clearly gritting his teeth as he peals the layers of bandaging back. It physically hurts Magnus to know the man in front of him is in considerable pain but cannot show it.  
  
Alec’s breathing stutters with Magnus’s movements.  
  
“Zzz, ouch, that yeah, that looks painful,” Magnus comments as the wide gash, still bleeding quite profoundly now that the bandage’s pressure is lifted of it is finally fully revealed. “Didn’t your doctors insist on you getting some stitches?”  
  
“I haven’t really seen anyone yet,” Alec suddenly admits.  
  
‘That explains the less than expert bandaging,’ Magnus thinks, asks, “Why?”  
  
Alec stutters out some disjointed sounds.  
  
“Hey,” Magnus briefly rests a hand against Alec’s calve, squeezes in a comforting gesture, “It’s okay, you don’t owe me an answer. May I?”  
  
Alec nods now biting his lower lip, and the bite hardens as Magnus’s magic sparks and begins to map out the degree of damage done, before turning into a much softer, slightly tickling sensation and Alec watches on mesmerized as the bleeding stills, the pain subsides and the wound loses all its visible depth.  
  
Alec’s eyes are wide, “I had no idea warlocks could heal people like that.”  
  
“Remind me to introduce you to my friend Catarina one day, what I just did … what I can do is child’s play compared to her skills. She is a true healer. I dabble. Your leg is not as new, but I shouldn’t really do any more, we don’t want your body to get used to someone else doing its work for it. So … it might leave a scar.”  
  
“Shadowhunter here. Scars are … an occupational hazard, a way of life.”  
  
Magnus cannot smile at that and so gets to his feet and turns, “… just getting some new bandaging.”  
  
As Magnus turns and walks off into another room, Alec watches Magnus’s right hand fly up to his upper left arm, squeezing, it seems, one particular spot before he lets go again with a sigh.  
  
He returns with a warm smile and the bandaging. Once the wound is redressed and Alec, with much less effort this time, back in his trousers, Magnus offers Alec a cocktail.  
  
“I’d love one, although, I have to admit I’m not much of a drinker.”  
  
“Oh, but you haven’t had my cocktails yet. They’ll change your life.”  
  
Alec following Magnus over to his bar catches himself with an all new thought, ‘By all means, I’d let you change my life any day.’ He pushes it away, not sure what it means, … not ready to find out.  
  
This time they settle down at the kitchen table.  
  
Two drinks in, Magnus finds out what kind of drunk Alec is. Cheeks flushed with warmth, eyes softened and glassy, he is … very talkative.  
  
“I couldn’t bring myself to see a doctor. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to explain to them about how it’s not poison at all but my supressed sexuality that is tearing me apart from the inside out, taking focus, making my hand unsure … all of me! Years ago my youngest brother Max almost died. Someone attacked him, left him for dead. It was a miracle he wasn’t with what that monster had done to him. He lost the arm that he used to try and shield himself with. So badly torn up, all they could do was take it.”  
  
Alec pauses for a breath, the heavy tremor in his hands visible to Magnus as Alec lifts the cocktail to his lips, balls the other hand on the table into a fist to hold in its shaking.  
  
“You don’t owe me any explanation.”  
  
“I owe myself one,” Alec replies with great sadness in eyes full of despair as they meet Magnus’s. “I …, I …. My father made it clear after that day we had to be strong, silent …, perfect soldiers. All of us. That as long as we’re not lying there, bleeding out, much more than half dead as Max had been that day, we’re not deserving of even so much as asking for any sort of help. I guess in his mind us not saying anything to the contrary means we’re alright. Or at least not unwell enough to deserve his or anyone’s attention. Medical or otherwise.” Alec stutters out a desperate laugh, drink forgotten on the table, eyes closing, head hanging, shaken, he runs both hands through his hair, “What a fucked up way to feel comfort.”  
  
Magnus looks angry when Alec after a long silence finds it in himself to look over at the warlock again.  
  
“Twisted,” Magnus states. His voice sounding much more sad and broken than anything close to the anger settled in his features.  
  
“I guess,” Alec replies, corrects himself a moment later, “No, no. I know … just how twisted it is, dangerously wrong, but …” Alec pushes his hands back up into his hair, fisting it, holds on to it tightly “… but it’s all up in here now, that … more than a thought, a feeling, a conviction: I deserve pain more … more than any form of help, love.”  
  
“Oh Alec. No. No. You are a good man. You deserve much more than relief for your pain, physical or mental, manifesting in your limbs, at your very core.”  
  
Alec’s gaze is fixed to the table top as he asks, marvelling at his muted reflection in it, curious, “What is it that I deserve, Magnus?”  
  
Magnus almost regrets lifting his hand to carefully cup Alec’s cheek, as the man beside him, clearly not anticipating the touch, gives a violent jerk before looking away from his own image, connecting his broken gaze with Magnus’s with a heavy breath, and another brief flinch, before he settles into the touch. “Sorry! Sorry.”  
  
“No need. I understand.”  
  
“I don’t.” A heaved sigh, “Or maybe I do. I’m certainly not used to anyone touching me like that.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like I matter enough … you might not want to break me.”  
  
“Alexander.”  
  
Magnus says his name in a way, Alec just knows there is more, “Yes?”  
  
“Have you ever felt ….” Magnus stops, looking for the right words to say.  
  
Alec looks far too scared for Magnus’s taste, for any conversation, but especially for one about ‘… love.’  
  
“Have you ever felt how bone-deep a peace it can give you to love? To love and be cherished and allowing yourself to let someone physically close if you can’t let them into your soul? You loving yourself enough to try to find out how …, tenderness, affection, love – you loving yourself … it makes all else possible.”  
  
Magnus sees the whole man shake as he heaves a breath, “I … I don’t … I’m trying to think that. About me. It’s … it’s just, it has been so long … since …, I struggle to remember.”  
  
“What was his name?”  
  
Alec frowns, gaze falling, the man staring of somewhere into space when he says, “I had been supposed to go on patrol with Jace, my parabatai, but he was off somewhere with …, doesn’t matter now, anyways, I could not find him, and I was fed up with it all, … so I went alone. Found a demon I could thankfully handle on my own. After … I just could not make my feet carry me back to that cold place.”  
  
“The institute,” Magnus supplies.  
  
Alec nods.  
  
“Where did you go?”  
  
“For a while I just wandered around the city, aimlessly. Then, I just happened to walk past two people kissing, outside a subway station.”  
  
“Two men.”  
  
“Two men.” Alec huffs out a laugh, it is a desperate sound. “I was 22, had never kissed anyone, was losing my mind over it day after day. That terrible ache inside … it was getting too much. All too much.” The next words come out in a stutter, “It felt to me like it was throw myself into the nightlife or onto the train tracks down those flights of stairs. So I followed the two hoping they’d head on a night out, and they did. That first night I just followed them around. Stayed fully glamoured all the time. Just in and out of a handful clubs and bars, some gayer than others,” Alec adds with a smile that brings one onto Magnus’s lips. “Surveillance is in my blood, I cannot help the habit.”  
  
“It is normal to want to figure out some things before jumping into the deep end.”  
  
“The deep end,” Alec echoes. “I came back some weeks later, the next chance I got to get away unnoticed. It was all so overwhelming, all those people looking at me like, like I …, I was not am not used to it. It makes me feel so …. He had a kind face, warm eyes. He asked me to dance. I answered that I did not know how. He said that that was perfectly alright. He tasted of mango. I never knew his name.”  
  
Alec’s tears are silent.  
  
Magnus wants to ask so many questions.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am kind of nervous about this chapter. Not entirely sure why and simultaneously overwhelmed already by all the reasons why.  
> Once again TRIGGER WARNING for so many things really. Everything that applies to my life. SELF-HARM, VIOLENCE, MENTAL ABUSE, PHYSICAL ABUSE, SHAME and PAIN and I am going to run out of space if I try to pull it all apart and put in here. And anyways you are here for the story so I won't keep you from it. I appreciate you for reading my author's note at all. Thank you.   
> Also, just a little sad heads up, for personal reasons I won't be able to update next weekend but will be back only in two weeks time. Until then ... I hope this chapter provides you with plenty to keep you interested.   
> Vy

‘Three days.’

It has only been three days since his father pushed Alec and Magnus into each other’s lives. In true Robert Lightwood, father, tradition, he had no idea what he was doing.

Only three days, nights, really, and yet …, already, every night since, returning mostly still under the cover of darkness to these dimly lit halls … gets harder for Alec. The glaringly obvious contrast growing sharper and sharper, too sharp to not tear at all of him.

Nothing about this place outside of Alec’s own four walls feels like home.

Magnus’s apartment, the parts Alec has seen of it, are already starting to … fill him, allow him to feel … a sense of ‘… warmth.’

Tonight, as his head sinks onto his bed’s pillow, dawn already creeping up beyond his drawn curtains, Alec tries to convince his brain to allow for some rest, ‘…sleep.’

But ghosts stirred are notorious insomniacs.

So even as Alec finally manages to slip into unconsciousness no part of him comes to rest.

Alec always thinks of his memory as unreliable, fuzzy at best, no more than reconstructed past.

Maybe it is just how he would like it to be.

Because sometimes, too often to allow for true rest in oneself, Alec’s mind goes on a mission to prove him wrong. … his recollection too vivid, too precise.

Falling asleep is often hard, Alec feeling defenceless, knowing he is, more so his mind than his body.

He has cut himself more times than he could ever count anymore out of a panic attack. The sting, the hot drip and flow of the blood taking focus away from …thoughts he cannot bear.

He has cut himself out of many a panic attack.

It is impossible to cut yourself out of a nightmare.

There are many things that it would be pleasant to not be able to recall.

Unluckily for Alec, these are also the things that are impossible to ever forget.

Even if hidden they stay sharp. Ready at any given moment to come back at you and tear you up when you are at your most vulnerable, when you are most defenceless, all anew.

 

**9 years ago:**

Alec’s lips are still tingling and the beat is drumming in his ears.

But they are not moving to it, they are moving with each other.

He is feeling warm inside, and alive.

Alec’s eyes are closed when he feels a hand on his shoulder roughly pulling at him.

Alec stumbles backwards, almost falls down in the process. He manages to catch his balance as he catches his breath before it gets firmly lodged, its edges digging into his throat as his eyes meet familiar ones, literally. ‘What are you doing here?’ Alec wants to ask but cannot make his lips move.

“We’re leaving,” Robert’s voice booms in Alec’s ears, despite the music still surrounding them, a moment ago making Alec feel safe and free, now, moments later, pushing down on him.

Robert is still fully glamoured that much becomes clear as he shoves his way through the crowd in the club, unseen, dragging Alec behind him by his arm.

‘How strange this must look to mundanes,’ Alec manages to think as he fights to stay on his feet, despite his father’s brisk pace.

Robert does not give him a chance to pick up his jacket from the barstool it is still lying on. He just drags Alec, in his thin T-shirt, up the stairs into the cold night air, out onto the street, then down the next dark abandoned alleyway he can spot before he violently jerks around and slaps Alec so hard in the face he finally does lose the fight with gravity.

Alec falls both his palms sliced open deep as he tries to break his fall onto a ground covered in bottles’ already broken into viciously jagged shards of glass.

Alec hisses in shock more than pain, but his father takes it to be the satisfying response he has been waiting for.

Like any sound from Alec right now could only be an admission of guilt.

Guilt he has to be feeling for ‘He knows how wrong it is what he just did,’ he must know, ‘… he is my son, and I taught him right!’

“If he were another shadowhunter I would slit his filthy throat!”

The words hit Alec harder than his father’s hands ever could.

Alec can no longer hold the weight of his pain, his body hitting the ground with a torn sob.

Cowering there amongst the dirt and broken things he turns his eyes upwards to face his father and screams his next words, unable to care at all that he is still not galmoured and might cause a scene, unable to help himself, his pain, “So why not slit MINE instead!”

“Because YOU will never set foot into any place like this ever again, or so help me Raziel, I WILL start slitting throats!”

Alec freezes in utter despair, eyes torn wide open, “They are mundanes! We’re sworn to protect them! ALL of them!”

“Really? Are we? I am ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN Raziel would APPLAUD my efforts to cleanse humankind of some of its own VICES!” he spits the last word.

‘I AM GARBAGE TO YOU!’ Alec’s thoughts scream at him.

The pain he feels cannot make it into words anymore, as he lies there broken, sobbing, bleeding … in front of the man who was supposed to teach him how to love. Love himself. Love others. Love and value all life.

Instead … horror is tearing at his insides. ‘YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!!’ Alec’s agony is ripping through him with unadulterated terror, but there is no use.

He knows his father, although he has not been able to bring himself to think of him as such in a long time, will never again after tonight. “I will stay away from them.”

“Good boy.”

Alec swallows back down the vomit abruptly filling his mouth.

“Say it.”

Everything dims down into a dull ache. Alec hollows out his heart as he says, “I will obey.”

Robert Lightwood crushes the shell of a heart under his boot, “Like you ever had a choice. You will do as you are ORDERED!”

Alec has no idea how he finds himself back at the institute that night, in his room, dark as the courtyard he stares out onto, … for a long time, just standing by his window, crying his eyes raw.

He cannot even feel the pain in his palms anymore even though the deeper cuts are still bleeding, blood freely dripping onto the marble.

When he manages to make it into the bathroom he takes one look at himself in the mirror doubles over and vomits into the sink.

He manages to drag himself into the shower, turns on the hottest water and crumbles onto the tiled floor, all of him dissolving into howling cries echoing of the walls closing in on him.

The cuts in his hands stinging.

The blood washing away.

His clothes soaking through.

He is so out of it that he has no more grasp of what is happening when he senses a body next to his in the shower, hears “By the Angel. Alec! What …. What happened to your hands?” as he is wrapped up in strong arms and lifted up from that floor.

Before he blacks out he manages to think how funny it is that ‘ … people always pick up on the most superficial wounds … but never …’ never manage to see beyond.

His eyelids are heavy, impossibly so, when he tries to pry them open. But he still knows he is neither in his own clothes nor in his own bed and a warm body is draped alongside his, holding on for dear life.

That in itself tells Alec that whoever it is is not asleep.

“Alec?”

No other voice is as familiar to him. His own a croaking sound, “Yeah?”

Alec can hear the naked fear in Jace’s next words. “I love you.”

Jace’s hold on him tightens further, “Shit! Alec! WHAT happened to you? I … our rune was … it was burning, searing into me and …. I thought you were dying. You looked it when I found you in your shower.”

‘I did,’ Alec chokes it all down, every fibre of that thought. Chokes on his next breath and sits up in a coughing fit as Jace stays moulded to his side through all of it.

“I’m here, Alec. I’m always here.”

The words are choked from his cried raw, soar throat, “You came to find me.” And somehow just saying, just thinking these words makes breathing possible, bearable.

Jace leans deeper into his side, holds on to an Alec, who has tears running silently from his eyes. The rest of the man frighteningly tranquil. “I’m here. We are.”

Alec has to push hard at the terrifying thought to make it go away, for this moment, because Alec cannot bear it, the thought of what his father might do to Jace if he found them like this, Jace trying to spent comfort to them both after what has happened last night. Although Jace knows nothing of it, apart from the already overbearing echo of pure terror it made run through even his own veins.

It is the last time Alec allows for Jace to be this close to him.

The thought of what his father might do one day does not stay buried, cannot, too soul-destroying in its might.

Over the next two months Alec cuts deeper and deeper, in more places than he ever has, as deep as it had felt that night - hits bone, more than once.

‘What does it matter?’ he can heal it with one rune. Feeling that, that pain to the bone, at least no one can take that away from him. They can take all else. He can.

He does … take.

Takes away one of the last things he truly fears to lose, as he moves himself further and further out of Jace’s reach. ‘For your protection.’

His father’s words have never stopped ringing in his hears, ‘“If he were another shadowhunter I would slit his filthy throat!”’

So in the end it is a relief to Alec when Jace finds out he can be with Clary after all.

Alec would pray for the courage to end it all, but who would listen ‘ … to me?’

Besides …, self-less idiot, he does not think he could ever do it …, do that to Jace, kill … just kill a part of his parabatai. After all ‘… that would be a loss to the world.’

But he starts thinking about it at that time - in that year in which he begins to shut all of the world out - looking for a way to get it undone, their bonding. A way to do away with his worthless self, let Jace’s part of him return to Jace himself, so he could stay whole. Alec keeps looking for years to come, but he does not find a way. In all that time he does never once stop, stop to consider that there is no way, no world in which his death could ever leave Jace whole.

Parabatai bond active or not.

To Alec his whole life - day in, day out - feels like nothing more than an enormous trap. A riddle he cannot solve … to any better end.

So he keeps hunting, keeps patrolling, keeps training.

So he keeps hiding himself, keeps hurting, keeps cutting to numb the pain inside. Keeps patching up the exterior to those wounds endlessly bleeding.

 

**Today:**

Alec is drenched in sweat and about ready to throw up when he wakes from the nightmarish memory clawing its way back into his dreams.

It had been locked away.

But ever there … in the actions used to repress it.

Alec knows.

He might be traumatised … but he is not delusional.

Now … everything is shifting inside him more than anywhere else. And it feels like everything might be about to change.

The most terrifying part … he is well aware of.

“It is all up to me.”

He feels physically sick.

 

When Alec does not stop by his apartment the night of the fourth day of them knowing each other Magnus is surprised.

The following night he is kept up by worry until the light of dawn breaks.

There is no sleep.

So Magnus sits himself down with paper.

Reaches out for a pen.

 

_New York, the sixth day of our acquaintance_

_Dear Alexander,_

_Only the fifth day of our acquaintance has passed and I do not wish to scare you off, in fact that would be the last thing I’d want to do. Maybe that is why … why I did not dare ask you two nights ago … for all the details, all the answers, for all your questions too. I do wish to know them, should you wish to share. There must be plenty, plenty of things to which I hope you will want to allow me – one day - to look for answers with you. Together - you and me. If you wish. This fire message is first of all to not let you forget: there is an us. I am here with you, in thought and more if you will allow me, want me … that close. I know it is a frightening thing … to let anyone in._

_Love, Magnus (I would want to talk about that idea, that feeling so much more when we are together, if I was not afraid all over of losing you over it)_

 

Magnus does not send it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again,  
> as you can see it took me a couple days more to write the next chapter. Hope you like.  
> Till next weekend,  
> Vy

Alec is … going through the motions, has been doing nothing more for days now. Days combining into ‘… almost an entire week since I ….’, since Alec last saw Magnus.

  
He had wanted more than anything to report sick and hide away in his room for all of that time. That had never been a real option though.

  
Alec knows his sister and she would have been on him in no time, would have asked him until he would have told her … everything. And he is too certain of one thing, one thing in particular, ’I can’t do that to you.’

  
This is not one bit about strength. Alec has found himself staring at, staring after Izzy these last days, stuck with a single thought. ‘I can’t do this to you, tell you what’s wrong. ALL that is so SO wrong. Knowing it will do nothing but make you feel as helpless as I do. Hurt you. I can’t hurt you. I can’t. I can’t do that to you.’

  
The other reason he cannot afford to hide away is, of course, his father.

  
Alec still has to leave the institute in the late evening hours, keep up the pretence for his father, ‘Yes, I’m still going there. Yes, I can feel it starting to work. I SUDDENLY LOOOOVE THE IDEA OF A WOMAN IN MY LIFE. IN MY BED.’

  
Alec needs to push down the urge to just scream out his frustration, his pain, throughout all of those days alone again, in his old world. He lets them all out on patrol, hunting.

If Jace notices anything he does not comment on it. Neither does Clary.

Alec has to be careful to hold it all back while showing his and Jace’s fighting skills to those young parabatai in training. Afternoon sessions with them are a stable now in his life, will be for weeks more. After all, the young shadowhunters will stay for at least another two months, maybe three. And Alec is feeling unhinged already, his life void of Magnus, his life full of all these strangers he is hiding himself from.

  
It is after another such session in which Alec has just barely managed to keep it together that he finds himself in the shower, crying, thinking, ‘I can’t, I don’t want to go through this alone anymore.’

  
It might be the single most important realization he has had in his life.

  
That evening, when he leaves the institute under the controlling gaze of his father, Alec steps further towards freedom and he knows it, is choosing it.

  
With each step away from that church he can feel his lungs fill deeper, expand wider, his heart swell with relief … and then he lets it go, his insides opening up towards something entirely new.

  
He has never taken stairs this fast in his life, and then he is standing in front of those wooden doors again.

Before his hand, already lifted, can be brought down to knock, the door is pulled wide open, “Magnus” stepping into the doorframe, towards the man frozen in the spot right in front of it.

The answer is a soft, “I sensed you stepping onto the floor.”

They simply stand, staring at each other, before breaking the silence, words colliding.

“I’ve missed you.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Nerves and silence take hold of them again.

As Magnus after a moment more tentatively reaches out, Alec throws himself into the still opening arms and just … breathes.

“I am truly sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. But, I did miss you. A lot.”

Alec’s hold tightens on Magnus as he asks, honest worry in his voice, tinged with confusion, “What could you miss about me?”

Magnus whispers into Alec’s ear, sad and hopeful, all at the same time, “So many things.”

Alec's hold tightens even further.

“Your bravery, in coming here, in staying away … when you needed to. In coming back. I know that is anything but easy.”

“It is dumb how difficult that is. Because …”

“Because?”

“Because I want to be here more than anywhere else.”

Magnus, a wry smile playing on his lips, moves to look Alec in his eyes, cups both of Alec’s cheeks with both of his hands. “You are brave. You are important.”

Magnus watches Alec frown at hearing those words.

“Alexander, you helping yourself will one day mean you can help others. Working through your fears and doubt in order to get to that place is remarkable, inevitable, it is important work, because YOU are important, the real you. The person who is honest with yourself.”

Magnus holds Alec’s eyes as he watches Alec’s features twist, fill with pain, bubbling to the surface. So he pulls him first back into a hug, then by his hand into the apartment.

Magnus is surprised when Alec pulls him against himself again, as soon as they come to a hold once more.

Magnus eventually asks, “Shall we sit down?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“Will you…, would you keep … holding me?”

“Darlin’, of course.”

Before Magnus can even let go to sit them down he feels a sudden sob rip through the body still in his arms.

“Alexander?”

“How do I stop?”

“Stop what, Alexander?”

“Hurting me. Hurting you. Because I know I did. Don’t deny it. I could see it in your eyes as you opened the door. I hurt you.”

“You had me worried.”

“Same thing.”

“No. No it is not. I had me hurting, because I care about you. If you are guilty of anything it is of making me care about you, so much. And that is nothing you should feel bad about, at all.”

“People always get hurt … when they come close to me.”

Magnus pulls himself out of the hug then and gets Alec to sit down. Places a kiss to Alec’s forehead before he waves his hand and has them both in loose pants and wide comfortable jumpers, two cups of tea steaming on the coffee table, lights dimmed.

Magnus scoots further back on the couch, opens his arms wide to a stunned looking Alec, “Come here.”

Alec does not have to be asked twice to move in, breathes out, “Magnus,” as he scoots fully onto the couch, legs tugged away under himself as he leans deep into the embrace so openly offered.

Then … Alec just breathes, breathes and lets go, sinks into Magnus’s arms.

Half an hour later they have scooted into a lying position, Alec’s head resting against Magnus’s chest, Magnus playing softly with Alec’s hair as Alec holds on to the warlock under him.

For a long time no one says a word. Alec listening to the beat of a heart holding affection for him, it is the strangest feeling.

Out of the calm, into the calm Alec blurts it out, “He says he will kill anyone I come close to, even a mundane. He caught me kissing that guy in that club. Must have followed me. How did I think I could get away?” Alec feels Magnus press a kiss to his hair in response.

Magnus needs a moment to process, to reign in his anger. “I can help you get away.”

“It will change nothing,” Alec chokes on this truth.

“It will change something for you,” Magnus offers.

“But not for ….”

Alec abruptly sits up, pulls a hand through his hair as he curls in on himself, head coming to rest on his arms, crossed over his legs pulled to his chest. “Jace and I have started to train with the young parabatai currently staying at our institute. There is that girl, Zama. I have seen the way she looks at Izzy, whenever she thinks no one is watching. It is more than adoration, it is that pure spark of a love that you can grow with someone else.” Alec looks over at Magnus, “Am I supposed to just leave her to the suffering that I know is to come?”

Magnus at that gets up from the couch, walks over to the desk Alec first encountered him at that very first night they met. “I…, while I waited, hoped … for you to come see me again, I spent my evenings, hours alone, with some research on your kind.”

“Shadowhunters?”

“Gay shadowhunters,” Magnus says, smiling a pained smile, and a moment later, a big book pressed into Alec’s hands, he learns why.

Alec flips through the pages, catching some lines here and there before, overwhelmed, tears messing with his vision, snapping it shut.

Breaths heavy, heaving, he pushes the hefty book to the side, feels Magnus holding him again.

“Just breathe. I’m sorry, I didn’t think enough about this being utterly overwhelming. I’m sorry,” Magnus repeats.

“So many exiled. So many dead.”

“There are happy stories too.”

“Really?”

Magnus feels Alec’s tearstained voice tearing at him. “Really.”

“How so?”

“In many ways. Good lives lived as mundanes, with love in them. And then there are these two institutes that never reported anyone as in breach of this law to the clave.”

“How is that good news?”

“Alexander, you and I, we both know we exist, everywhere! I dug deeper into those institutes’ records. We are well hidden, but we are there, gays, gay shadowhunters of the same gender sharing quarters meant for married couples, under the pretence of it being the only accommodations still available, although other records, if you cared enough to compare them, show otherwise. Even a wedding ceremony performed here or there secretly.”

Alec goes completely still in Magnus’s arms, whispers, voice broken, “They lied.”

“What’s that?” Magnus asks gently.

“They lied. They always taught us it would kill anyone who tried to misappropriate those runes meant for man and woman.”

“Is that the phrase? Meant for man and woman?” Magnus asks curiously.

“Yes, why?”

“That explains why it does work for the likes of us, it says nowhere, meant for a man and a woman.”

Alec is sad, is so angry, “They are using the law against us!”

Magnus presses another kiss to Alec’s hair, “It is not all as dark as we feared, as hopeless.”

“Maybe not,” Alec agrees. Asks next, “Where are those two institutes?”

“Now that is the really fascinating part,” Magnus smiles, “they are so called travelling institutes. One moment in one place, the next in another. They are the safest facilities in your world. Even your own people often have trouble locating them. It reads almost as if they can decide whether they want to be found.”

Alec frowns, staring off into the distance.

“Magnus?”

“Mmh?”

“Can I stay here tonight?”

“Are you sure?”

“Please, Magnus. One night. I want to feel safe for one night.”

“Sweetheart,” Magnus is stunned into silence for a moment as Alec responds to this endearment by directing his tearstained eyes to meet Magnus’s. “I would never send you away.”

It is not until Magnus is lying in bed, again holding Alec to himself, that the thought creeps into Magnus’s mind, ‘Am I doing right by you?’

More than anything Magnus is afraid of it all ending in chaos. It has, too many time in his life already. And he is afraid, afraid of what it might turn him into, having to take on any more pain.

Riches. Memories. Love.

Gaining always means losing in the end.

Magnus takes a long time to fall asleep that night, Alexander fast asleep in his arms.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a week late *goes and hides*  
> I hope you can still enjoy the new chapter, despite the delay.  
> xx  
> Vy

When Magnus wakes up his arms are empty.

  
His chest tightens with the realization. Pushing himself up on his elbows, he listens for a sound indicating Alec might still be here, in the apartment.

‘Nothing.’

Heaving a sigh full of worry and inexplicable dread, he gets out of bed and letting out a yawn puts on a fluffy pair of socks before treading towards the approximate vicinity of his kitchen, rubbing at his eyes all the way. Concern for Alec’s well-being pulling at him with every step, he knows already, ‘Every moment until I see you again will be nothing but this feeling.’ Magnus is not sure he will be able to stand another week like the one they just had without going looking for …, his thoughts get stuck on the question growing ever more prominent in his mind. ‘What are we to each other?’

Rounding a corner, stepping into his kitchen, he freezes in place. He won’t have to break any unspoken promises between them after all.

Still in the clothes Magnus had changed them into magically last night, his back to Magnus, there, at the kitchen counter, Alec is standing.

The warlock hesitates as he realizes Alec has not noticed him yet. He does not want to startle the other man, does not know how to avoid it anymore. Voice as soft as Magnus can make it, still dripping with the heavy remnants of sleep, he says, “Good morning.”

Magnus watches as Alec’s movements cease, his shoulders tense, then, he hears a cluttering sound.

It takes a moment but when Alec turns his arms fall to his sides, the long sleeve on his left arm, a moment ago pushed up to his elbow, falling back down, covering up Alec’s skin .

Alec’s eyes are not meeting Magnus’s, arms both hanging completely limp, strikingly lifeless, all of him. Magnus still could not miss if he tried how puffy Alec’s eyes are, is distracted by that for a moment more before he hears the dripping sound, eyes shifting sees the blood running through the fingers of Alec’s left hand.

Magnus rushes forward on instinct, as he does catches a glimpse past Alec of the knife, spattered with blood, lying in the kitchen sink. He thinks he hears a whisper, “I couldn’t find my stele.” The implications send an icy shiver through his veins.

  
Magnus reaching for Alec’s arm, for the jumper’s sleeve, itself beginning to be soaked in red, all Alec says, voice raw, is “I didn’t mean to make a mess.”

Magnus takes in a single sharp breath, says, fingers already sparking blue, “It’s okay. I’m a warlock, remember?” He chokes on the next thought though, cannot bring it out in words, ‘No harm done.’ Instead Magnus’s head starts screaming all sorts of things at him. ‘You missed it. You should have known! How could you NOT realize he …. Just HOW MUCH he …. SO much PAIN in his every look, every movement! Of COURSE he is trying to make it stop.’

Magnus is trembling with emotional exhaustion as he guides Alec over to the kitchen table, “Please let us sit down so I can have a look at your arm?”

Alec looks like he is about to be sick, but eventually nods.

The two men sitting, Alec’s arm resting between them on the table Magnus pushes the sleeve of Alec’s jumper back up his arm. As Magnus looks up from Alec’s arm he finds Alec gritting his teeth, ‘Biting back … everything. Shadowhunters!’ Magnus hates … has always hated having to stand by and watch what they do to their children. ‘How could every single one be meant to be a soldier? No! You are MADE to be that. Presumed destiny. No options. No choices. No way out but one.’ And Magnus is afraid Alec is moving further and further, faster and faster into that one direction. He wonders if Alec would ever have chosen to be a soldier at all, had it been an actual choice. No one will ever know. ‘Choices.’

  
Magnus looks from Alec’s face, determinedly set in lines revealing no emotion, back down at the arm resting in his hands. Several cuts at different angles, all pouring blood, are covering the inside of Alec’s arm. With all the blood running it takes Magnus a moment to spot the pattern to them.

Runes in pieces, all of them, cut up, literally.

Magnus reaches out with his magic, wanting to help, heal, when he feels Alec’s right hand close around his wrist.

It is half prayer, half command, “Don’t.”

“We have to stop the bleeding, Alexander. Some of these cuts are really deep.”

Alec is still not looking at Magnus, eyes firmly downcast, “I know.”

Magnus cards his free hand careful to not startle Alec through the man’s hair, tempted to send a soothing wash of magic through Alec’s body he holds back, would never manipulate Alec like that without his explicit consent. “Alexander?”

“Yes?”

“I have a first aid kit in my bedroom, can I …, can we, do something mundane at least to stop the bleeding? Please?”

Alec swallows down a lump. Nods. When he gets to his feet he is unsteady on them. The man is unusually pale, his steps are slow, and so it takes a while before they are sitting on Magnus’s bed again, Alec’s wounds disinfected and Magnus still busy bandaging them.

Only as the last bandage is secured Alec brings out, “I couldn’t find my stele,” before a sob, followed by another and another, ripping loudly through him.

‘Every tool can be turned into a weapon. Against anyone. Yourself. So easily.’ Magnus tries to rationalize the pain, the horror of it all. But instead it makes him more worried, makes him wonder, ‘How many others are there who…?’ Eternity has told Magnus a crucial lesson, no one, NO ONE is EVER the only one. At the same time, ‘We are all alone, all of us all alone in our suffering. Pain paralyses. Prevents us from reaching out. But you are not alone, we are here, together.’ He cannot say it. Afraid it is not what Alec wants to, needs to hear. ‘Good intentions can hurt just as much as ….’

Alec’s left hand flies up to cover his eyes as he continues to sob. And Magnus sees a small child hiding from the world. Trying its hardest to make it all GO AWAY. He halfway expects Alec to utter these words to him in a moment’s time more.

  
He does not. Right hand fisted into the bedsheets beside him Alec sobs, “I feel so lonely, Magnus. I am SO ALONE. Always alone facing everyone else. I can’t. I CAN’T!”

  
“May I hold you?” Magnus asks carefully.

  
Alec sobs into the space between them, “Please. Please!”

It is all at an awkward angle, Alec still trying to cover up the sound of his sobbing into both his hands as Magnus holds the man curled in on himself. Magnus does not care about the sore neck he will have later.

He loses track of how long it takes before Alec falls quiet against him.

It feels utterly wrong to be the one to say something first, and just when Magnus thinks he is going to break …

“Thank you.”

“Sweetheart, always!” Magnus hears Alec sniffle, and Magnus can no longer hold himself back, “I’m sorry I hadn’t realized.”

“Realized what?” Alec asks confused.

“How you had meant it. Yesterday, when you had asked me how to stop hurting yourself.” Magnus feels Alec tense all over against him.

Alec stays silent, but stays in Magnus’s arms too. Scoots deeper into the embrace after a moment more, as if he is trying to disappear in its comfort. Never to emerge again.

Magnus inhales a deep breath of relief. From the moment he stepped into the kitchen he had been afraid, afraid Alec would run, just leave. For good. Forever. Instead, he is moving closer and closer.

‘How will I ever let go of you again?’ “Want to go back to bed for a bit?” Magnus asks. “I could stay with you.”

Alec nods against him.

“Mind if I magic us some new clothes?”

Alec shakes his head.

“Any preferences?”

Another shake of his head before Alec moves out of Magnus’s arms and under the covers, his back to Magnus. Then, a whisper quickly added, “Long sleeves, please.”

Magnus summons the most comfortable pair of pyjamas he has ever owned onto both their bodies, long-sleeved, long-legged too. One a dark blue, the other a dark green. Magnus climbs under the covers too as he asks, “Darlin’? Still want me to hold you?”

Alec, does not turn, further curls up on himself, whispers, ”Please.”

Magnus feels Alec relax against him a little as he scoots in to allow for Alec to rest his back against Magnus’s chest.

Minutes of nothing but breathing together pass.

“I’ve always wondered what it would feel like, being the little spoon.”

Magnus pushes the sadness he feels aside, in response only firms his hold of Alec. “I will be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?”

Magnus can hear the fresh tears in Alec’s voice, his own reply instant and firm, “Promise.” The warlock suspects their body heat building between them and under the covers does the rest to lull Alec’s troubled mind back into a sleep Magnus cannot find. But he too closes his eyes, his arm carefully slung around Alec’s middle holding him close for all of the next hours. Ignoring his grumbling stomach, and the ache seeping after a while into the shoulder he is lying on.

When Alec steers again, turns in Magnus’s immediate hold onto his back he too rubs at his shoulder before his brain catches up with the ache in his left arm again.

Their eyes meeting, Magnus has never seen Alec look this petrified.

“Magnus, I … I …,” Alec’s breathing is quickening already.

Magnus wordlessly sits up against the headboard, Alec looking up at him as Magnus reaches one hand to card through Alec’s head of hair gently, “You are safe here. We are good. Try to relax, just focus on your breathing, slowly, in and out.”

“Magnus.”

“You don’t have to explain … anything. Nothing. You can, if you are ready. If you … want to. But you don’t have to. You never have to do anything when you are with me.”

Alec is still gazing up at Magnus, Magnus’s hand still carding through Alec’s hair in a steady, soothing rhythm. And Alec allows his head to settle against Magnus’s thigh.

Magnus notices Alec’s hands fidgeting nervously and so he reaches his free hand out to him, offering it for Alec to hold.

He grasps at it firmly with both of his hands shaking.

A tremble runs through all of Magnus as Alec lifts the warlock’s open palm to his lips and places a kiss at its centre, hesitant, yet unmistakable, before he holds it tight between both his hands, nuzzles against it with his cheek.

Magnus feels like he has lost track entirely of what they are to each other, sources of comfort in this harsh a world, friends, … or more.

Another hour passes before any of them speaks again.

“It’s quiet here.”

“It is. Yes. One of the reasons I love to live here.”

“The institute is always so busy, loud. You can never just ….”

“Be?”

Alec heaves a sigh, “Just be.”

Magnus’s hand is carding again through Alec’s hair.

“Feels nice.”

“I aim to please,” Magnus says with a smile.

“Me too,” Alec’s voice suddenly has gone bitter.

“They didn’t leave you a choice.”

“That feels like an excuse.”

“What do you think you should have done?”

“I don’t know,” Alec brings out in obvious distress, swallowing down lumps of air, suddenly lodging in his throat. “But what I did, what I am doing, I … I ….”

Magnus scoots back down then, again lying together, he pulls a crying Alec to himself. Says nothing, just listens to Alec’s breathing calming over some minutes. Reminding him, ‘Everything takes time.’

“When I woke up and I saw you next to me, asleep, … just sleeping next to you … it made me so happy. And it made me so sick … so sad. I got up and the room was spinning already because all I could feel was this panic, knowing I would have to go back. That none of this is really real, because none of it will last. Can last.”

“We care about each other, that is real.”

“Not as real as …,” Alec just stops.

Silence has just settled when he rips into it, starting over, “I had to make it stop. The thought of returning to that place, those people, it HURT SO MUCH. I can’t. I CAN’T! So I made something else hurt more so I could forget. I just needed to forget WHAT I DO TO MYSELF … every day. Just being there.”

Magnus pulls out of their embrace then, hovers over an Alec lying on his back, a hand running through Alec’s hair once more, Alec closing his eyes, trying to focus on the soothing feel amidst the chaos in his thoughts.

“Stay.”

Eyes still closed Alec frowns. “How?”

Magnus reaches to soothe out the lines on Alec’s forehead with his thumb.

Alec’s eyes open to a warm smile on Magnus’s face and all of a sudden Alec’s heart is beating at twice its usual rate. Alec wonders what that feeling is. Unfamiliar. New. Soft and solid all at the same time. ‘Warm, so warm.’

“Come with me,” Magnus says, pulling back the covers from around them and pulling Alec out of the sheets, by his hand through parts of this apartment Alec did not know yet existed.

They stop in front of a dark green panel of wood set into the wall. It hardly stands out against the dark blue surroundings. Alec suspects as with every detail in Magnus’s loft that he gets to know better and better not a design flaw, quite the opposite. Deliberate, functional design – full of surprises.

Alec is not disappointed as Magnus lets go of Alec’s hand, “Place your palms both onto the surface. Then imagine the space you’d like to live in.”

Alec, frowning again, places his hands onto the designated surface, closes his eyes and tries to picture … something. “I’m no good at this.”

“You will do just fine,” Magnus encourages. After a minute more he says, “Okay, I think that should do. And we can always redo it. Now, step back, try the door handle.”

“What door handle? There is no ….”

Magnus answers with a smile, “The one you just put there by imagining it.”

Sure enough it is right there, the dark blue metal of it shining as Alec looks down, “I …, what?”

Magnus lets out a happy laugh. “See. Doing just fine. The door does not need a lock, it is calibrated to only let you in, and anyone who you invite to come in. Of your own free will, of course.”

Alec still looks utterly stunned.

“Now, shall we take a look what you put inside?”

“What I …,” Alec shakes his head at the whole situation but in the same moment already finds himself reaching for the door’s handle, pushing it down. “I, wow!” Alec takes the first steps inside, turns around as he notices Magnus is no longer beside him. Warm smile, Magnus asks, “May I come in?”

“What?”

“This is your space, Alexander.”

“It’s your apartment.”

“In theory,” Magnus agrees, smile only widening happily now.

“You can’t just give me …, I can’t take your ….”

“Stay,” is all Magnus repeats, expression softened again, almost pleading. “Stay, and see if it helps with your anxiety, the urge to self-harm. Let’s find out what happens when you are not … when you don’t have to be Alec Lightwood, shadowhunter.”

“You mean it? You’d want me … around? What if that turns out to mean I can never go back? What if you get stuck with me? You cannot want that!”

Magnus is still standing in front of the door, “May I come in?”

“Of course, yes! Yeah,” Alec answers flustered.

Magnus walks over to Alec then, pulls him into his arms, just holds him, Alec begins to hug back. “I want you to be happy. All I know is you are not right now. Change helps, new challenges. You’ve got to embrace them to grow. And it might not be entirely new to me but I have not had a roommate in a long time, so, good as new, you know. Warlocks, we love a challenge. Plus, what is the worst thing we could get up to together? Put our whole damn world on its head?” Magnus feels Alec press a smile into his shoulder.

“Thinking small I see.”

“What are a revolution or two in the grand scheme of things?” Magnus smiles himself into the hug.

“So immortality does change you,” Alec remarks.

Magnus replies with another smile, “… mostly your perspective on things.”


	10. Chapter 10

They stand holding each other until Alec’s stomach grumbles.

  
Magnus pulls out of the hug with a laugh. “Good point, we really should get some food into ourselves. I am famished.” He looks over at the wall, reads the time from the simplistic clock on it. He hesitates only briefly before adding, “I have one appointment to take care of today. Will you be alright alone for a while? It is nothing exotic and hopefully won’t take too long.”

  
‘Stay!’ Alec swallows down this first instinctive, impulsive thought, Magnus will never get to hear it, says instead, “Where do you need to be? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  
Magnus smiles kindly, “Not in the least, I’m glad you are interested in what I do. I’m meeting Catarina at the hospital where she works.”

  
Alec nods, “I’ll be fine. And … I think what you do is amazing. I’d love to learn more about what exactly you do.”

  
“You know, there are potions that don’t require any addition of magic at all, just a skilled hand at measuring. I’ll gladly show you.” ‘… uncover some of your hidden talents.’ Magnus feels so certain they are there inside Alec, just waiting to be stirred.

  
Alec works past his nerves, smiles and nods. Dares to think for the first time in his life of a life outside the institute.

  
Their first meal together is a quick one – rice, some well-seasoned chicken and steamed vegetables.

  
Magnus sees to it that Alec has a freshly brewed pot of hot tea on the coffee table by the couch and then he goes on his way.

  
Magnus is already gone two hours, when Alec - after acquainting himself some more with the apartment - finds himself sitting again in ‘… my room, in Magnus’s apartment’, on a bed that looks, Alec has not missed it, and is sure Magnus will neither, still exactly like that in Magnus’s bedroom. Even after two reboots of the room in Magnus’s absence, which Magnus had encouraged he might want to try after the first sparser version of the room had been conjured by Alec, this detail has not changed. Many other things have.

  
Now there are colourful curtains, a warm, soft carpet, … no cold, hard marble. Not anymore. Not anywhere. Two large windows, one currently wide open, despite the slight chill in the evening air today. Alec is breathing. Sitting in a room, his own, that is him, well, as much of him as Alec himself currently knows how to be, breathing, ‘Being.’ Huge chunks of him missing still. It terrifies him. It has him curious too. The only thought that helps the anxiety from flaring up anew already is the thought that Magnus is not pushing him into anything, is ‘… offering to guide me.’

  
No, it is not by accident that the place Alec has envisioned over and over fits in seamlessly with Magnus’s apartment. Alec is fearful he might not.

  
There are some features after all, here and there, that remind Alec of the institute. The empty, cold walls his mind does not allow his imagination to go wild on, not yet anyway – too scared of what might turn up – the dark wood of the wardrobe, the sharp edges of the desk against a wall, the hard wood of the single chair in front of it. ‘Function. Not Comfort.’ The thought races, a surge, through him, ‘My life. That’s my ….’ Self-comfort, self-care. Before today Alec had never even considered these to be any sort of option for him.  
‘The institute, being a shadowhunter are part of me. My past?’ Alec does not yet know how to feel about any of it but he cannot deny it, wants to be done with denial, and open to change. He suspects should he really get the chance, the time, not much of the institute will stay with him in the end. He is hoping for time. Plenty of it.

  
So much of a change already.

  
It still hurts.

It always hurts. It hurts deeper than facing things, that next step: enabling yourself to move onwards from them. It takes your everything and then some. ‘And what if I don’t have enough to give?’

  
But there is a small spark of joy in each step lit by hope that he is desperate to trust is more than a mere illusion. ‘Magnus is real,’ it is a thought that comes to him as if it might mean that anything could be.

  
Half an hour more passes. So it is the very late afternoon slowly slipping into evening, and Alec’s phone is blowing up with text messages from Izzy. It is just lying there on the covers, buzzing before, only blinking now, as Alec has turned off all sounds.

  
He is sitting completely still, legs drawn to his chest, staring at it, when he hears a knock at the doorframe, turns his head and smiles at the warlock standing in it. “Done for the day?” he asks.

  
The smile greeting him warms Magnus’s insides, keeps him hoping, trusting they have actually done the right thing here, for both of them, making room for each other in their lives. “Catarina just needed me to boost her with some of my energy, walk her rounds with her once in case something came up that required something more. She is stretching herself to her limits, as usual.”

  
“She sounds like superwoman, every time you talk about her.”

  
“Oh she is,” Magnus says with an adoring smile of his own. “She really is.”

  
Alec nods, eyes darting back to the phone on his bedcovers blinking again.

  
Magnus looks around the room, appreciative of the changes he can spot right away, “I like what you’ve done with the place. May I come in and take a closer look?” Magnus inquires, a genuine question.

  
“I’m glad you approve. And, you don’t have to ask every time.”

  
“It is your space, your home away from …,” Magnus stops as he sees Alec tense, smile slip. “Anyway, I do. I do want to, respect your privacy.”

  
“I pretty much always want you here,” Alec says, sensing a blush on his cheeks in approach as he admits to it so freely.

  
"Give it some time. The longer we live together the more that will change," Magnus grins with amusement.

 

The thought rushes through Alec before he can grab onto it and hold it back, 'I doubt that. Very much.'

 

Magnus steps closer, nods towards the device on the covers as it blinks again, “What’s going on?”  
“They’re lookin’ for me.”

Alec has not received a single text from Jace but he can feel him tugging at their bond inside him. It is weirdly uncomfortable and reassuring all at once, over and over, every single time. With every single tug Alec does not know how to exactly feel, though he would like to simply forget about it for a while, about it all. But really, and he knows that already, that is going to be a huge, close to impossible challenge. At least it used to be for Alec on his own, he has yet to learn to factor a certain warlock into his life, every once headache inducing equation.

“Something I can do, apart from maybe close this window for you?”

  
Now that Magnus mentioned it Alec is sensing it too. “It is getting cold, isn’t it?” Alec concedes.

“May I?”

  
Alec nods, and with a single wave of Magnus’s hand the window is closed, the room instantly beginning to fill back up with a more solid warmth. Or maybe Alec is imagining it, maybe it is simply the warm feeling inside he has learned to associate with Magnus’s presence in his day.

“Much better,” Magnus hums, asks again, “Anything else?”

“Your company. A drink, maybe?” Alec asks tentative.

“I can do that,” Magnus answers enthusiastically. “Be right back.”

When he is he has a tray with four drinks on it in hand. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I thought we make it a party.”

Alec has a spark in his eyes when he replies, “I’m pretty sure I have never tried that one. What is it?”

“Oh, Honey! Only the best invention in the world, a Mojito. Mint, Lime, Sugar, all mixed with rum. Delicious. But I could also rustle us up something warm instead, some mulled wine, a hot coco with a kick of Irish cream?”

Alec bites his lip, another smile, shakes his head, “I’m a mint kind of guy. That sounds great."

“We also got a pina colada, a coke and spiced rum, and simply a red wine.”

Alec reaches for the mojito, takes a first sip through the straw and lets out a moan that has him colour in embarrassment at hearing himself.

Magnus finds himself staring at Alec’s lips, glinting with some drops of the liquid clinging to them before he shakes himself out of it and simply reaches for the second straw peeking up from the glass still in Alec’s hand. Magnus leans in, lets out a moan himself at the taste.

It has Alec’s insides tremble, goosebumps form on his skin as he swallows down another mouthful of the sweet, minty sharp liquid. He clears his throat, eyes locked on Magnus’s, “Really good.”

“I know, right? The only thing better are my pina coladas.”

Alec can only agree when he takes his first sip some minutes later after they have finished of the mojito together, a warm buzzing running already through his veins, another moan freely slipping from his lips now, all embarrassment forgotten, alongside all the calls and texts, the warm buzzing inside him, growing, and Magnus’s warm laughter at Alec’s enjoyment, overtaking the feeling of the persistent tugging at his core, growing ever stronger.

Not used to the impact of the alcohol Alec after a brief period of hyperactivity crashes quickly, falls fast asleep against Magnus on a bed that even FEELS like the one Magnus himself has. And Magnus feels a strange sense of pride in that realization. 'You felt at home with me,' in Magnus's bed, 'my arms.'

Magnus has just drifted half off himself, when he bolts up from Alec’s side. He only registers what has woken him when the booming banging against his front door repeats itself.

  
Magnus shakes of the disorientation, checks that Alec is still asleep then gets up, rushes out of the room and through his apartment towards the front door.

  
Mind still foggy with fatigue he pulls it open without thinking it through even just once.

  
Before Magnus can react someone has pushed past him, shouting at him, “Where is he?”

“And you are?”

“I know he is here, I can sense him. What have you done to him?”

The stranger suddenly zeros in on him and Magnus finds himself pressed harshly up against the next best wall. “What have I done to him, shadowhunter? How dare y….” Magnus feels the man’s hand slip up to his throat, a threatening squeeze, promise of more as Magnus’s eyes go wide. He can feel his magic beginning to crackle at his fingertips. A reflex to the imminent threat.

But before Magnus can bring himself to react, to hurt the stranger, Alec is right there, pulling the other shadowhunter’s hands off him.

“JACE! STOP IT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Jace fully turns toward Alec, even though he detests the feeling of a stranger at his back, making himself so vulnerable to a retaliating blow, after all he just attacked the ‘… man?’ Jace chances a glance back over his shoulder and sees the sparks still pooling at the other man’s hands. ‘No. Warlock.’

Magnus is still regaining his breath when his brain catches up, ‘Jace. Alexander’s parabatai.’

“Alec!” Jace sounds as confused as relieved.

Alec on the other hand just sounds upset, “What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t feel you! There was NOTHING on your end, it had me so scared I had to come looking for you. HAD to!”

Magnus is forced to just stand by and watch Alec burst out into tears.

“Alec?” Jace asks as Alec turns away from him again.

And Magnus knows ‘… to hide tears streaming.’

Alec is too exhausted to hold them in, or the words that follow, they mix in with them, “Because I’m not in constant PAIN. For ONCE I’m not in PAIN.”

Jace looks bewildered, “What?”

Moving past Jace, Magnus reaches out to Alec and he does not just take the offered hand but buries himself against Magnus’s body, Magnus’s arms closing around his shaking form.

Jace sounds angry and confused with every word, “Has this warlock put a spell on you? I don’t understand.” The blonde adds hesitantly, “Come home with me.”

Alec breaks into sobs at Jace’s all too painfully unknowing words and Magnus’s embrace strengthens, letting Alec unmistakeably know ‘You’re not alone in this. You’re not! Not anymore.’

Alec takes another trembling breath against Magnus’s skin then says softly, “It’s okay, Magnus. I have to ….”

And for a terrible moment, the moment it takes Alec to turn out of Magnus’s embrace and back to facing Jace, Magnus is terrified, for Alec, thinks ‘Alexander’ might actually just go back to that known life, ‘despite the agony’ it causes him. Holding his breath Magnus listens for Alec’s next words.

  
“I know you don’t understand. For you that place, … the institute, has been a home. It never will be for me. It can’t. Ever.”

Jace stands wildly gesticulating before fisting his hands, both black-gloved, in his weapons belt, “What are you TALKING about, Alec? You are my parabatai. We’ll always belong with each other.”

“You HAVE TO STOP! Stop thinking like that. I should never have allowed myself to be this weak, to give in to that temptation to feel close to someone of my own gender at least. I am so SO sorry Jace. I used you. Us. I should never have done that. I can never make it right again.”

“I LOVE YOU, ALEC! DAMN IT! Stop talking like that. What is this really about?”

“THIS! AND A MILLION THINGS!” Alec burst into a shout. “EVERY SINGLE THING!”

Jace takes a step closer again, “Like …you being gay?”

Alec’s eyes tearstained are fixed, unblinking on Jace’s. Alec cannot move, cannot look away. “He is torturing me. I AM torturing me in those walls.”

“Who?”

“You really don’t understand?”

It hurts something deep inside of Alec, Magnus realizes, profoundly, even just having to ask this.

“Understand what?”

“You’re not the only one with a monster for a father!” Alec can feel a tug at their bond again, but this time it is a different kind of tug, pain, the blow he just hit Jace with running deep. But Alec cannot stop, not now. “He has trained me well over the years. These days, for the most part, he does not even have to bother lift a single finger, say a single word. I am, after all, the best authority on how to torture me.”

Jace looks scared Alec notices when he looks up again. ‘A rare sight.’

“I love you.”

“You keep saying that like it will FIX things. You have to let me go, let me leave it all behind. Maybe ….”

“Maybe?”

“Jace, I haven’t been gone for a day. My friend here, Magnus has offered me a place to stay. I NEED to try. I AM HURTING DAMN IT! SO MUCH! Jace, don’t you get it?” While saying these words Alec already realizes that maybe Jace really cannot really get any of it, at all.

Alec feels it like a new blow to his gut when Jace ends up hung up on the exact wrong thing.

“Friend?” Jace asks. “How did you meet a warlock of all people? You know how we are not supposed to search out downworlders.”

“WE’RE ALSO NOT SUPPOSED TO BE GAY! JACE!!”

“You keep saying that like I’m supposed to be … what? … shocked? ...disgusted? Alec, I have known for a long time."

“Why didn’t you try to help me then?” Alec all of a sudden bursts forward.

“Help you how?”

“I don’t know!” Alec shouts in desperation. Letting go of a frustrated long supressed scream. “You want to know how Magnus and I met?”

‘Oh, Alexander, no!’ “Alexander, maybe now is not the ti….”

“Robert brought me here. Asked Magnus to … to,” Alec has never before allowed himself to find words to say it out loud. Finding words to do so is much harder than he had expected. Giving his thoughts shape will make them feel still more devastatingly real. “He asked Magnus for conversion therapy. Magical conversion. To make me straight. He asked Magnus to use his beautiful gift to mutilate me! So that I would finally stop being a project, a burden, a worry. A mistake!”

Alec is focused on Jace’s drained complexion. If he was not he could see the surprise cutting across Magnus’s face at hearing Alec put such clear words to the pain coursing through his every part.

Alec just shakes his head, looks down. Staring at the floor states a simple request, devastating to Jace in its quietness, the firmness and certainty conveyed through it. There is no doubt about the sincerity of Alec’s wish. “Jace, leave.”

“How can I simply leave you behind?”

“If you have ever truly loved any part of who you know as me you will.”

And how is Jace to answer that? So he stands, and stares, and then turns on his feet. Walks right back out of the apartment he had stormed into.

Magnus tries to hug him, but Alec just stands stiff and frozen, staring at the once more closed front door. “He left."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this took so long.Truth? For several weeks I was eaten up alive by self-harm, so ... not a productive time in any sense; apart, of course, from the parts one has to play to survive this world. I am too grant at self-destruction. Too practiced. I'm sorry for this note too, but I couldn't hold it in. I just hope it did not spoil your read. (vy)


	11. Chapter 11

Alec lets out a strangled sound. His emotions too big to put into words.

  
Magnus is standing still at Alec’s side, sees him reach for his arm, start to pull at the bandaging.

Hoping to regain Alec’s attention, Magnus hums, “How can I help?”

“What?” Alec asks confused.

“Look down, sweetheart,” Magnus softly prompts him.

Alec does, jumps in his own skin as he sees the blood seeping through his half-unravelled bandages. Loose strands still held in his hand he feels the sticking wetness of the blood’s first fresh traces on his fingertips. “I hadn’t meant to. It was just a, just … a reflex.”

Magnus looks at him kindly, “It’s okay! We’ll just redo the bandaging. … unless you’d prefer me making use of some of the skills I got from Catarina?”

Alec sighs, “It’s not that I want to be in pain, stay in pain. If I wanted that I’d … .”

“You’d have gone with Jace. Back to the institute, Robert. I know.”

Alec turns to Magnus, whispers, “I’m dizzy.”

Magnus counts it as steady growth that Alec admits to it so freely, he carefully, without further comment, guides Alec back to his room, has him sit down on the bed. “What do you want?”

“I just cannot look at them anymore.”

“At what?”

Alec once more reaches for the bandaging, takes it all off himself. Magnus does not stop him. Not this time. “I think I started cutting because I was ripping into my skin already anyway. It did not seem like that big of a deal. In the beginning.”

“When did you get your first rune?”

“Eleventh birthday.”

“If you don’t want to answer, or can’t, I get it, but, um, you started cutting, um, around the same time? With your stele?”

Alec, head hanging, cannot bring himself to look at Magnus when he says, “At fourteen. I needed …,I needed so much back then and no one was willing to even acknowledge who I was, who I am and what that truly meant. What that means I need. So I used what I had and took control at least of where I was hurting most. I needed to forget the crushing pain inside me. So I gave me something sharper to feel, less scary.”

“I cannot take them away, your runes,” Magnus admits.

Alec shudders, eyes momentarily flickering to meet Magnus’s before he looks back down, fixating on his arm, “I honestly had not expected you to be able to as big a thing as it is made out to be in my world. Taking runes.” Alec closes his eyes, swallows around several deep breaths, trying, trying to calm himself. “They don’t need to be gone, not yet anyway, I’ll settle right now, I’ll settle for not having to rip them apart and me with them over and over and over.”

Magnus nods, pulls Alec close and turning his head to the side presses a kiss into Alec’s shoulder, “You don’t want me to make them whole again. I get it.”

“Could you heal my skin and not … them?” Alec watches Magnus frown in concentration.

Then, “I cannot but I know someone who can. If you’re willing to meet her.”

Alec takes a deep breath. “Yeah, okay.”

Magnus is already moving his hands to shape a portal as Alec asks, “What, right now?”

“I’ll be right back,” he throws the words over his shoulder stepping into the glow.

Alec blinks twice and there Magnus is again, a woman in a white lab coat beside him, portal gone.

“Magnus, you could at least have let me change out of my work clothes if you want us to go have a drink.”

“Who said anything about drinks?”

“Well for one I can smell on you you’ve already had some tonight, and that’s our favourite, dare I say our only pastime lately. Why did you not just bring it up earlier instead of ambushing me like that?”

Magnus nods towards the bed, “Forget usual.”

Catarina startles as she realizes they are not alone, and in a breath her skin is no longer shining in the brilliant blue it was a moment ago.

“Cat, meet Alec Lightwood.”

“Alexander, this is my oldest friend, Catarina Loss.”

Catarina spots the cuts on Alec’s arm, rushes to his side, “Oh hun, what happened?” She watches Alec instantly drain of all colour left in him. “It’s …, you don’t need to explain.”

  
Alec looks over her shoulder at Magnus, who gives him a soft but questioning look.

Alec takes a deep breath, “I need to, a little, I think.”

“I can just heal them for you. Really, it’s okay,” Catarina offers, then realizes something else. “You’re not THAT drunk, Magnus. You could have healed him.”

Magnus shakes his head, gaze earnest, “Alexander has a special request.”

Catarina’s curious eyes wander back to Alec. She listens intently.

“Can you …, cou…. Magnus already said you could, so …,” he heaves a sigh, “Would you heal my skin without putting them back together?”

“Not put what together, hun?”

Alec wipes away some of the blood again pooling on his skin.

“Oh, okay. Yes, I can. Yes I can do that for you, but ….”

“What is it, Cat?” Magnus asks worried.

“Should you ever want to … return to your institute, that life as a shadowhunter …, if I do this what you’re asking now, no one might ever be able to heal them fully for you again. Your skin might reject new markings.”

Catarina is taken aback when she sees Alec’s eyes lighten up. Not what she had expected his response to be.

Eyes wide, gaze pleading Alec blurts out, “Do it.” Pleads, “Please. Will you?”

Magnus can sense that Catarina is hungering for more information, more answers to questions not even asked yet, hungering for a full medical history, all the reasons leading to Alec clearly longing desperately for such a drastic step. “Cat, if you’re not comfortable doing this, we understand.”

Catarina wordlessly searches out Magnus’s eyes, eyebrows raised, mouths, inaudible to Alec, ‘We?’ her gaze open and soft, curious. In a century she has not heard Magnus use this word accompanied by the affection spilling from his lips with it now.

A hefty sigh pressed from his throat, Magnus’s eyes fall shut.

Alec watches the small exchange, uncomprehending its depth.

Catarina turns back to him, “Hun, you’re sure? REALLY sure?”

Alec’s expression tightens, narrows, “I’m SO sure. SO SO sure.”

“I think you best lie down then.”

“He was feeling dizzy already earlier,” Magnus supplies.

“Then you definitely need to lie down for this.” Catarina looks back and forth between the two men several times as she adds, “Either of you, don’t be alarmed should you faint, Alec. That could easily happen and … there will be a substantial amount of pain. I’m doing more here than just healing you, I’m directing which parts are allowed to heal, a much less natural process, so your body will fight it initially. Hun, tell me, did you also have some drinks tonight?”

Already lying flat on his back, pillow supporting his head, Alec nods, asks with worry, “Is that a problem?”

“No, hun, quite the opposite, it means your body will likely stay a bit more relaxed during the process, so hopefully it’ll help.”

Catarina flexes her hands, rolls her shoulders and straightens her back as her eyes close and Alec sees her magic for the first time, ‘A lighter shade of blue, a brighter glow than Magnus’s,’ Alec thinks, whispers, “Magnus? Stay?”

Magnus in response rushes closer, over to Alec’s bedside, settles with him on the bed, moulded to his right side as he holds Alec’s hand in his. “I’m here. Won’t go anywhere.”

“Cat, can I help out?”

She shakes her head as Alec gulps and Magnus grumbles unhappily. “Not a good idea, mixing our two brands of magic for this. So, hun,” she looks back at Alec, “this’s what’s going to go down here: I’m going to clear away the blood, give you a strong pulse of pain medication. You might feel a bit nauseous from it, some people do, without the usual tests beforehand I really can’t be sure how exactly you will react to this. Then, after making sure the medication has had a moment to take effect, I will start and guide the healing. Sound okay to you?”

Alec looks over at Magnus and sees his concerned but trusting gaze directed at Catarina, “It does.” Then he admits out loud, “I’m a little scared.”

“Only fools aren’t. And if Magnus here cares this much about you, I can sure as hell tell you’re no fool. It will be fine, painful at first but then fine.”

Alec grits his teeth and nods.

Catarina takes a deep breath and begins.

Magnus feels Alec’s body instantly stiffen against him, can tell from the way he lets out short, focused breaths that Alec is feeling the pain Catarina had warned him about but shadownhunter he is he powers through it. If it weren’t for the silent tears quelling from the sides of his eyes after the first couple of minutes most onlookers would never know what he is going through in the minutes more that it takes for Catarina to fully guide his body through healing itself the way Alec had requested.

“Hun, you alright?” Catarina asks.

Alec gives a curt nod. "Yeah."

Catarina’s magic changes from its intense bright blue into a warming yellow, softens on the edges and then slowly fades into a momentarily bright pink before growing fainter and fainter until she finally retracts her hands, shakes them, shakes off the focused movements. She looks up from Alec’s arm for the first time since starting the process.

If she had had any doubts about Magnus’s feelings for Alec a moment ago they would all be washed away now.

Magnus is placing kiss after kiss into Alec’s hair, on his forehead, ”You did so well. SO well.” As he hugs him against himself they settle fully against the sheets with each other and Magnus feels Alec let out a deep shuddering breath, despite Magnus’s weight pressing onto his chest.

“Magnus.” It is the sound of pure relief.

Catarina walks over to the desk, plops herself down onto the chair in front of it, mutters under her breath, “Ouch, what an uncomfortable chair.”

She stares incredulously at an Alec suddenly burst out into laughter. “Everything alright, hun?”

“Better,” Alec says, still through laughter, clinging on to Magnus, “much better.”

“I’m glad to hear.”

“I apologize for the chair," Alec adds, “I should really redecorate again. … I feel … new enough.”

“Redecorate?” She asks confused.

“We’re in the green room, Cat,” Magnus supplies.

“Ah, your famous green room. I vaguely remember us getting up to all sorts of ridiculous antiques with this in the late 80s. Didn’t Freddy once turn the whole thing into ….”

Cat does not get to finish, Magnus interrupts her, smiling wide, “Yeah. Yeah he did.”

Alec tries to sit up, and Catarina is by his side in a flash, “Don’t get up yet. Might bring on new pain.”

“My arm is tingling and tender, but otherwise I feel really good.” As soon as he tries to get to his feet, his head spins, a nauseous feeling settling in his stomach,. “Yes, okay, I see your point,” Alec concedes as a knowingly smiling Catarina helps Magnus guide Alec to sit back against the bed’s headboard with both of them at either side.

Magnus waves a hand and there are three glasses in front of them. “Water for us, darlin’. And for you your favourite, Cat. A thank you.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“Oh I definitely should. Thank you so much for helping us.”

‘’Us.’ There it is again’, she smiles at him, “YOU are both very welcome.”

Two gulps into the cool, refreshing liquid Alec almost drops his glass as there is a renewed banging at the front door.

“Does no one know how to use a doorbell anymore?” Magnus tries to overplay his own surprise and concern.

Alec grabs for Magnus’s arm as he makes to get up, “Don’t go. Don’t open it.”

Magnus can see his own thought reflected in Alec’s eyes ‘It might be Robert.’ So Magnus sends a pulse of his magic out through the air.

Alec watches with fascination as it dissipates. He looks back at Magnus, expectantly.

“I don’t know that energy. It’s someone I’ve never met before.” Magnus can read the relief on Alec’s face.

‘So not Robert.’

It saddens Magnus infinitely to know that to his shadowhunter there is no more terrifying thought than his own father. It saddens him even more as he is all too familiar with this feeling. “Cat, will you stay with him while I check who it is?” As if on queue there is the banging again, it is “Clearly someone who does not give up easy.”

“Sure thing, Catarina smiles. “Alec and I will be fine. Take your time.”

As soon as he has exited the room, out of Alec’s sight, he heaves a big sigh, allowing himself to feel all the worry and dread freely before letting go of it and with each step towards the front door putting himself firmly together, no cracks showing, no vulnerabilities visible. Nothing left to attack as he pulls the door wide open.

This time he is not pushed aside but fixed firmly with a glare much more intimidating than any push or shove ever could be.

“I’m the Head of the New York Institute and I demand to see my brother, Alec Lightwood. Immediately!”

The woman starts to fidget uncomfortably as she is met with Magnus’s most disarmingly charming smile, “Ah, the infamous Isabelle Lightwood.”

“Izzy.” She corrects, then adds at lightning speed, “But only to my friends.” ‘And we’re not friends, you’re holding my brother hostage,’ is what her eyes add.

Magnus steps aside, gestures for her to “Come on in. We can see if he’d like to see you.”

There is a sudden breakage in her voice, care and worry seeping in, “I need to know he’s well and here of his own free will. I know my father originally brought him to you to get rid of some demon venom. Alec told me. What I don’t understand is what has happened since. Is he still sick?”

‘That depends on your definition of sick,’ Magnus thinks. He does not know this woman, Alec has not talked much about her. She does not seem like the hostile type, but impressions are that, impressions, our feelings, our instincts projected onto strangers, nothing more. He knows.

“Let’s see if Alexander feels up to talking to you.”

Magnus leads the way and as they stop in front of the still wide open door to Alec’s room and she spots her brother sitting there on the bed, looking pale, she rushes forward, collides with an invisible barrier.

She turns on Magnus, all the fierceness and unbridled power back in her eyes, her every word, “You’ve locked him up?” Her hand is on her weapons belt when Alec’s strained voice calls from within the room, “Izzy, no! It’s for my protection, so I have a choice. I need … I need choices in my life. I need some control over my life.”

“You don’t want me here?” Izzy sounds so hurt Magnus wants to reach out and hug her.

“I don’t know,” is Alec’s honest answer. “How did you even know where to come? No, I know. Jace.”

Izzy nods. “He said he had found you but that you had refused to come back with him. Alec, why?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

Izzy pales, “I could barely get a word out of him, he was crying so hard.”

Magnus sees Alec swallow hard at hearing this.

Jace normally '... holds everything in.' Alec allows himself to feel for their bond for a moment, the pang of pain he is met with has him retreat from it again instantly. 'I'm sorry, Jace. I'm sorry.' It is exhausting keeping himself cut off from their bond, but it is all Alec can do to attempt to feel sane today, himself, closer to himself.

“Alec, what is really going on?” Izzy sees Alec murmur something but cannot make out the words, “Sorry?”

“I said that you can come in.”

Izzy turns to Magnus, “What does he mean?”

“Try the door again.”

This time nothing keeps Izzy from entering and she rushes over to Alec’s side. “Oh by the Angel, Alec, you scared me when you just disappeared.”

“I didn’t. I’m more me than ever, sis.”

Izzy frowns. “Tell me what’s been going on, the full truth this time.”

Alec shakes his head, “I’m not ready.”

Magnus feels an absurd sense of pride.

“But Alec ….”

“No! Izzy.” Alec half-shouts. Voice still raised continues, “I can’t do things at your pace anymore. I won’t.”

“How am I supposed to help you then?” Izzy asks, voice filled with held back tears.

Alec clasps one of Izzy’s hands in his, “You’re not.” He sees her opening her lips to respond but he cuts her off before she can, “Just know that I’m safe here. I’m safe with Magnus. This is Catarina by the way.”

Izzy looks over at the other woman, “Hello.”

“Hello, dear.”

Izzy turns back to Alec, “There’s really nothing I can ….”

“No, Izzy.”

She is about to get up and leave but Alec is holding on to her hand.

“Well, maybe, one thing.”

“Anything,” she nods feverishly.

“Tell Jace …,” Alec stops.

“Yeah?”

“Tell Jace I love him too and that I will contact him when I’m ready. I want you in my life. I just don’t know how yet. I’m trying to figure it out. Please forgive me, both of you.”

“Alec.”

“This was never meant to hurt you, or anyone. But I was existing at the price of destroying myself and I … sure, maybe I could have kept going for another couple of years before killing myself ….”

“Kill yourself?” Izzy feels sick at her utter ignorance to the extent of pain her brother has been living in.

Alec feels a squeeze at his arm, Catarina giving him a sympathetic look as he looks up at her, a nod as if to say ‘Go on. You and your sister both need this honesty, more than anything. It’s the right step to take.’

“I hate myself so much. I will never be able to allow anyone to love me. Those are the thoughts that have been killing me every day. Decades. Two decades of that.”

“Oh Alec,” Izzy is crying.

“Magnus is making it possible for me to feel something more again. I …, I think I ….” Alec swallows, looks over at Magnus, feelings stuck in his throat.

Catarina follows Alec’s gaze to Magnus.

Hands clasped nervously inside each other, Magnus is still standing by the door.

‘Oh dear.’ She knows that look, though it has been a long long time since she has last seen it on Magnus’s face. ‘Helplessly in love.’ She feels certain the shadowhunter by her side is not able to read it. She will have to have a word with Magnus about putting the poor man out of his suffering and soon.

Izzy breaks the look between the shadowhunter and the warlock as she throws herself at Alec, hears him hiss as she pulls him into her arms.

“Izzy.”

“Are you hurt?” she asks, as the sound emitted registers with her as the hiss of pain it was. When there is no audible response she scoots back a little on the bed and looks Alec over. She cannot see anything obviously wrong with him, sitting there in his long-sleeved black PJs.

  
Alec squirmes a little under his sister's gaze, praying the hastitly changed clothing is really covering up everything. He has no explaining left in him tonight. “I’m good now. Catarina helped me. She’s a doctor.”

“So it was the poison still?” Izzy asks frowning.

“No. No venom.”

“Then what?”

“Another day, please. I’m honestly exhausted.”

“I’m allowed to come back?”

“You can always ask. I don’t know yet.”

“But Alec ….”

“Honestly Izzy, I really just don’t know yet what I will need tomorrow, the day, the week after. Give me time. Please. I can’t offer you anything else right now. I can’t without betraying me again, and I really want to be done with that.”

When Alec calls Izzy’s office number four weeks later to let her know he feels ready to see her again, he is not prepared in the least to hear the voice of the person picking up the phone instead.

“Maryse Lightwood speaking.”

He hangs up before he realizes he is doing it, dropping his phone onto the couch cushions as if it had just caught fire in his hand. “Fuck!”

Starring at it just lying there all Alec can think about is Max, and the ideas now being put into his head about him, his older brother.

For the first time since moving in with Magnus, and after all that has happened between him and Magnus in the last month, Catarina’s warning truly, fully hits him. “I can’t go back. For no one.”

All that Alec is left with is the hope that the people he longs to love will move forward with him.

He reaches for his phone.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess the size of this chapter makes instantly clear how it is that I have not been updating for some weeks. I needed this to be one chapter, it was the only thing that felt right for the story. I am hopeful you can enjoy and agree.  
> I wish you a wonderful festive season.  
> xo Vy

Izzy had left first.

  
Catarina not wanting to impose had downed the rest of her drink, “No need to let this beauty go to waste,” and then also made to leave.

“Catarina,” Alec had called after her.

When she had stepped closer once more Alec had simply pulled her into a short hesitant hug, whispered, “Thank you,” then let go again.

“If you want to I can come over in a couple days’ time, check on you?”

“I’d love that.”

“Great. I’ll give you guys a call.”

Now, Catarina having stepped through a portal of her own conjuring, mouthing to Magnus ‘Tell him,’ as she went, Magnus and Alec are alone again.

Alec drinks the rest of his water and with a huff of air lies back down.

“I’m going to leave you to get some rest then,” Magnus says and heads for the door.

“Magnus.”

“Hmh?”

Alec simply searches out Magnus’s eyes, holds his gaze for a moment, lips twitching …, “Good night.”

“Good night, Alexander.”

Magnus ends up sitting on his living room couch for half the night, debating himself on what to do next, ‘How do I ….’ He huffs a sigh and heads off to bed.

When Alec wakes in the morning he hears music playing in the apartment. Getting up he finds Magnus in the kitchen, making coffee.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning. How have you slept, darling?”

“Good I think. Thanks.”

“And your arm?”

Alec looks down at it, pushes up his PJs sleeve. “You know, I had not even thought about it at all until you just mentioned it.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ….”

Alec interrupts, “No, no, it’s fine, it’s good. I … do want to talk about it all. Change is good, right? I never could talk about me before. I, I want to get used to it. I don’t mind at all, is what I’m trying to say.”

Magnus answers with a warm smile, “Good to know.”

Alec looks over at the kitchen table, apart from two cups of coffee it is still empty, “Mind if I help out with breakfast?”

“Not at all.”

Magnus marvels at how comfortable it feels, them working around each other in the kitchen. Magnus preparing some fruit, Alec, sleeves both pushed up, arms exposed, cut up runes, is happily working away on some scrambled eggs. ‘I could get used to this,’ Magnus thinks.

The next days pass quietly.

Alec sleeps a lot.

Magnus reorganizes his work space in a whole new way. Sets up a second work station … for Alec.

Then there is that morning when Alec does not come out of his room, as lunch time rolls around Magnus cannot take it anymore and knocks on Alec’s door.

“Come in.”

‘Something’s wrong,’ when Magnus steps into the room his fears are confirmed.

Alec is curled up under the covers, shaking all over, beads of sweat clearly visible on his forehead.

Magnus rushes over, ”Oh, sweetheart. What’s the matter?”

As soon as their eyes meet Alec bursts into tears.

Magnus steps out of his slippers, has Alec scoot over, climbs under the covers with him and pulls him back into the space he had just moved from.

Alec’s breathing starts to even out against Magnus a minute later.

“Can I help? Can I do anything?”

“You already are.”

Alec falls asleep against Magnus, the warlock starring out of the bedroom’s windows, trying to decode what just happened.

To Alec’s surprise Magnus is still there when he wakes up again.

“Hey.”

“Hey. You’re still here.”

“Where else would I want to be, sweetheart?”

“You had a life before me.”

‘It was an increasingly empty one,’ Magnus thinks. “I prefer my life with you.” He feels Alec shiver. “Alexander?”

Alec scoots back a little in Magnus’s embrace.

They look at each other, just … look. Alec’s gaze flickering all over Magnus’s features, settling on his lips, then his eyes. “I love … your eyes.” To Alec’s surprise Magnus blushes.

“Thank you,” and Magnus sounds so painfully shy.

“Magnus?”

“Hmh?”

It just crashes out of Alec in the comfort of Magnus’s presence, “I need to cut. My mind is constantly screaming at me to do it.”

“Giving you a headache?”

Alec swallows heavily, nods.

Magnus runs a hand through Alec’s hair, along his scalp, “Sweetheart, is that why you’re hiding in here?”

Alec’s chin jerks in something that resembles a nod, “If I hadn’t given you my stele to lock away … I’m afraid I’d already have …, you know.”

Suddenly the state Magnus had found Alec in makes a lot more sense, ‘Tense, holding on to yourself, wrapped inside soft covers. Pouring energy into holding together instead of ripping apart.’ “Can you think of any time that you felt the need to do it but ended up not … harming yourself?”

Alec makes himself try and remember. Ends up shaking his head after a while. “Forced to hold out – by patrol and people being around and …stuff – until I physically could, but otherwise …. No.”

Magnus’s hand is carding through his hair again and Alec looks back up.

“Do you feel calmer inside now? After we have spent time together.” Magnus thinks he knows the answer, the shaking and outbreak of sweat having stopped. To his huge relief Alec actually answers with a decisive nod. He places a kiss on Alec’s tense forehead and watches Alec’s eyes fall shut.

“First step?” Alec asks, worry still clear in his voice.

“First step.”

Alec buries again deeper back into the other man’s arms. “What next?”

“Would you like to spend more time together?”

“Please.”

“Then I have something to show you.”

“Can we stay here a little longer? I’m not … ready, to get up.”

“All the time in the world, sweetheart. Take all the time in the world.” Magnus motions with one hand and the curtains are pulled closed, the room falling into a dark that on other days, alone in his room in the institute would have only shattered Alec more.

Right here, right now, being able to burry deeper into their shared warmth, Alec heaves a sigh of relief, whispers “Thank you, Magnus.”

“Any time.”

The room is quiet, calm and warm.

Magnus is unsure whether Alec has actually fallen back asleep, not that it matters, they are curled up with each other under soft blankets, wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and with Magnus’s wards up, which they have been since Catarina left, days ago, Magnus has no reason to not feel safe and hopeful, hopeful that he can provide what Alec needs.

It is the late afternoon when they have made their way into the kitchen and consumed some food, before Magnus leads Alec through the living room over to the heavy oaken desk at which they had first met each other. “What I wanted to show you ….”

The space looks bigger to Alec than it had before.

Magnus notices Alec’s look, “Yes, it is.”

“You created space?”

Magnus smiles, “I might have moved some walls, extended some floors, no big deal.”

Alec’s eyes are wide, “No big deal?”

“Sweetheart, it really is not, for me. And there are a couple new shelves and cabinets in here, over there I set up your own corner for you. My books are now rearranged by potions that require magic and those that don’t. I also sorted our ingredients in that way into the cabinets. I hope you like it?”

Alec stares incredulously at the new arrangements, gaze then shifting back to Magnus. “You did all that for me?”

“Darlin, why wouldn’t I?”

Alec just shakes his head and throws himself at Magnus, holding him close as he can. “You’re amazing.”

Magnus is speechless then himself, he had forgotten altogether what it feels like to be appreciated so wholeheartedly, “Alexander.” He and Catarina are so used to each other’s presence it had needed this new person in his life to remind him that most of his inherent features are good. Magnus does not feel this way about himself, most of the time. No matter how many lives he improves, saves, in his current potions business, … charity, … helpline.

Alec breaks Magnus free from his spiralling string of thoughts, “I can’t wait to study with you.”

Magnus hesitates when his mind presses him to ask, “How are your urges?”

Alec sighs, his answer honest, nervous, as his right hand grips his left forearm through his clothes, “Still there.”

“How about I show you a couple of basics to keep your hands busy?”

“Gosh yes!”

So that day Alec learns about the most standard ingredients in potion making, heads off to bed that night with two books on potions in his arms.

Having taken the first couple steps down the hall Alec turns back around. “Magnus?”

The warlock is still standing behind his oaken desk, and for a moment Alec feels like he has stepped through a portal into the past, cannot help the unnerved glance around to ensure Robert is not actually there. ‘Will this ever stop messing with my head?’ The tired thought is broken by Magnus’s response.

“Yes?”

“Can I …, would you …?”

“Alexander,” he steps out from behind the desk, closer to the man, “you can ask for anything. Remember?”

Alec heaves a breath, nods, “I know, I do, in theory. It’s just hard sometimes to … for me, to … I’m still getting used to being allowed to just say what comes to my mind, how I feel. What I feel.”

“What are you feeling?” Magnus steps further toward him.

Alec’s eyes are wet, wide with fear of rejection as he dares himself to say, “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

Magnus finds himself overwhelmed by the hopefulness and fear in the other man’s eyes, “Would you like to stay with me?”

Alec’s breath catches in his throat, ‘How are you real?’

“Alexander?” Magnus asks when Alec just keeps starring at him.

“Yes, please.”

These words are followed by some peace filled hours, between soft sheets.

Waking up next to Magnus is once more a shock to the system for Alec. On instinct he grabs for one of Magnus’s hands, squeezes too hard, he knows. “Magnus? Magnus. Please wake up!”

Magnus jolts awake. Shakes off the sleep and realizes Alec is lying beside him, chest heaving in shallow bursts, having ‘ … a panic attack.’ “Sweetheart, let’s get you to your feet.”

“Don’t think … can’t. Can’t move,” Alec wrings out, hyperventilating lets out a sad whine.

The sound rips away at Magnus’s insides.

With a lot of encouragement and well-meaning words Magnus finally gets Alec to turn around onto his forearms and knees, tears spilling down onto the covers, as Alec fights to keep his body up, lets his head hang down between his shoulders and tries to breath.

Magnus can only wait. Remind Alec, “You’re here, with me, not alone. Not in your room at the institute. It will be okay. You’ll be okay.”

When Alec finally really seems to be breathing again Magnus scoots back, out of Alec’s reach, asks “Better?” Because he knows it is one thing to look like you are doing better and another entirely to actually be better, by any measure.

Alec heaves out between heavy breaths, “Waking up next to you, I … I was just right there again, panicking, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Magnus pulls Alec back into his arms then. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For waking me up. For reaching out. We both know the kitchen still has knives, you could just as well have … you know.”

Alec stumbles through more shaky breaths, pulls him close, buries his face against Magnus’s shoulder as they lie there again on the bed.

“You didn’t expect it to just be all better, did you?”

Alec shakes his head against Magnus.

Placing a kiss to Alec’s head Magnus reassures, “Neither did I. And it’s okay like that.”

“It is?”

“It definitely is. Figuring stuff out, that’s just life.”

Alec huffs, “I know no one like you.”

Magnus chuckles, “Darlin’, there is no one like me. Just like there’s no one like you.”

Alec’s arms tighten around Magnus. He never wants to let go again.

Then again there is hunger and bathroom urges, and potion making, so eventually they let go of each other and get up, go on mostly separately for now, but in each other’s company.

The next days pass with Alec reading up on potions. Magnus putting together some for his clients under Alec’s studious eyes. “Your magic is captivating.”

They fall asleep together at night, but in whoever’s bed it is, Alec wakes up alone in the morning, after what happened last Magnus is making sure of it. Just as much as he makes sure to look in on Alec whenever he misses breakfast.

He does, from time to time.

When he does, Magnus is there with him.

Alec is no longer left to his own devices.

It is slowly making all the difference.

They end up curled around each other on the couch a couple of times.

They are startled out of one of them by a portal suddenly opening in the middle of the living room.

“Interesting read?” Catarina quips as she sees Unpacking Potions lying next to Alec on the couch, in the place she had just startled him up from.

“Woman!” Magnus calls out, “Some warning?”

Catarina just laughs, “Oh like you warned me last time?” She pointedly ignores his glare. “I came into work today to be told that I’ve too much overtime and that I’m required to take some time off. So I thought ….”

“So you thought you just drop in on us so that hopefully you might at least give one of us a heart attack, so you could keep working, despite the fact?”

Catarina snorts before squeezing herself onto the couch right between Alec and Magnus.

Rolling his eyes Magnus gets up, “I’ll make us all some tea.”

“Lovely,” she calls after him before turning to a still startled looking Alec. “How have you been?”

“Um, my arm is doing great, thanks to you.”

“I’m glad to hear that. How about the rest of you?”

“The rest … is …,” Alec breaks off with a sigh.

“That bad?” Catarina asks frowning at him.

Alec listens for a moment for Magnus, he still seems to be working away in the kitchen, the sounds of cabinet doors opening and closing drifting over to them.

“He is so amazing. But I can’t stop …, I can’t stop the urge to … fully. What if I’m too used to it to ever really not feel the need anymore?”

Catarina just sits and listens and nods, asks, “Panic attacks happening more often now?”

Alec frowns, “How did you know?”

Catarina reaches over, taking Alec’s hand smiles at him knowingly, “Anything else would’ve surprised me. You’d been doing this for a long time, yes?”

Alec nods, “Very.” He remembers who he is talking to and adds, “Well, for a human.”

“How could it not upend everything inside you, making these huge changes to your life. Trying is the important part. Keeping up trying is the hard part.”

Alec huffs.

“You have to give it time. Give yourself time. And keep going, keep trying, even if you slip. Especially when you slip. I know that is the very hardest part, not letting go of the little parts of you that you already own, and slowly adding onto them. Building you up yourself. No one else can do that for you. Also, you need to make actual changes to your life that will help you not relapse anymore … one day. And by not relapse I don’t mean not feel the urge to harm yourself. We both know that that urge might never fully disappear, ever. It is linked too closely to everything you have come to be up to this point. The time now is about you allowing yourself to actually feel all the things you have been supressing before, and to act on them. As long as they don’t hurt you or others, of course.”

“You’re saying …?”

“I’m saying that you are allowed, it’s the healthy thing to do, to take time to learn more about yourself, to become you. Outside of the pain and trauma you have lived through. And some of that will stay with you, maybe even most of it, but that’s not a bad thing.” Catarina pauses, pulls Alec gently against herself, “Well, it doesn’t need to be.”

Alec smiles sadly at her as she releases him from the hug.

Noticing his gaze, “Hey! I mean it, you don’t have to do all that alone. Come talk to me any time. If there’s something you feel is impossible to share with anyone else, even Magnus, come find me. I so mean it. Completely!”

Suddenly a tray with three cups of steaming hot tea appears in front of them on the coffee table, startling both.

A shrugging Magnus with a grin on his face rounds the corner to the living room a moment later. “I could not be bothered to carry it around.”

Catarina rolls her eyes at him but cannot help admit, “Smells wonderful, Magnus.” She reaches for a cup.

“Well, thank you, Cat. There’re also some homemade cookies right there if you’d like,” he adds, making a plate appear with the snap of his fingers.

“Since when do you bake?” Catarina asks surprised, suspicious about a bakery just having been robbed.

“Not me, our Alexander here however knows his way around a kitchen.”

Alec nods, “Keeping my hands busy. I’m learning all sorts of new skills. Magnus’s idea.”

“Oh, so that’s why you’re reading up on the composition of potions.” Catarina is delighted to see Alec’s mood lift considerably in mere moments.

Alec does sound excited, Magnus notices too, when he says, “I like the idea of being able to do what Magnus does, what you do. On a much smaller scale of course since I AM missing the magic, but yes, Magnus offered, and I’m very grateful.” He shoots Magnus a smile that Cat does not miss, “I’d like to be able to help someone, after all that demon killing.”

“Well, if your potions are as well composed as these soft-baked ginger shortbread cookies, just the right amount of everything, I don’t think anything will stop you. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do.”

“Me neither,” Magnus chimes in.

Alec blushes and biting his lower lip smiles at them.

They end up watching a movie together.

When Magnus returns to the kitchen to clear away the tea set as the credits roll, Catarina leaves Alec to return to his previous read and joins Magnus in the kitchen.

“Have you talked yet?”

Magnus is busying his hands with the washing up, putting away milk and sugar, the leftover cookies, he does not turn to look at Catarina as he replies innocently, “About?”

“Don’t play around, Magnus. My head can’t take it, and neither can his.”

Magnus throws only a brief glance at her over his shoulder, hands still buried in the soapy water in the sink, “Cat, look, he’s still ….”

“Suffering, I know. And even when it stops hurting as much he will be in recovery, maybe all of his life. Have you ever considered that it might help him, help him immensely, to know?”

“Know what?”

“Magnus!” it is an accusing tone, a reminder of the promise they had once shared: No playing each other, only honesty. “That he IS already loved.”

And so the truth comes out between friends, as it so often does, when there is nowhere else room for it.  
Magnus’s head hangs, hands stilled, “What if I hurt him?”

Catarina steps closer, rests a palm against Magnus’s shoulder, “What if someone else does?” She squeezes lightly, “Someone who cares much less about him.”

If there is one person Magnus can rely on for the truth, welcome or unwelcome alike it is “Cat.”

“I know you are scared too, hurting too. But maybe that’s why it will work.”

A breath, another… and Magnus is scrubbing the cup in his hand with undeserved force, unneeded, “He knows nothing about me, how could he love me?”

“He knows you’re kind.”

“Cat.”

“No, don’t Cat me. It’s why he trusts you. Don’t betray that trust by being dishonest with him.”

“How am I being dishonest?” Magnus plays for time he does not know what to do with if he is honest with himself. He drowns out his own doubt for a moment by rinsing the cup under loudly rushing water.

“Don’t hide from him. He is not hiding from you. Do you really think he’s not noticing the way you look at him? Tell him, Magnus. Tell him what those looks mean so he does not have to wonder. The last thing he needs is to feel like …, like he’s not deserving of your honesty. I implore you, Magnus, play with open cards. Yes, he’s still very fragile right now in his new skin. But you can strengthen him, you’re not going to break him. He’s not weak, or … or broken, just … simply in pain. Like you and I have been so SO many times. You know recovery is possible. We both do. First hand experience and all that.” Catarina is starting to sound exasperated.

Drying off his hands, closing the last open cupboard, Magnus finally turns around to face Catarina, “I’m scared.”

“Magnus, I’ve known you for centuries, your love. It’s a magnificent thing. It’s not selfish. That’s why you’ve been the one getting hurt, so often. Trust him, try and trust him. And allow both of you to make mistakes. Because you both will. You’re new to each other.”

Magnus lets out a shaky breath, “How do I tell him?”

Catarina smiles at him and pulls him into her arms, “Sharing a lovely meal always creates a relaxed atmosphere.”

If Alec is surprised that for four nights in a row Magnus is creating fabulous meals from scratch for their dinners together he does not show it.

It is on the fifth day, as Alec walks in on him brooding over the cookbook in the kitchen, in the middle of the afternoon, that Magnus finally capitulates when Alec prompts, “As much as I appreciated all those wonderful meals, I’m so fine with just ordering in some pizza or something, really.”

“You are?”

“Why don’t we spend the afternoon going somewhere together, instead of you chaining yourself to the stove, yet again.” Alec thinks he has discovered something about Magnus over these last days, he tends to busy himself, as he has advised Alec to do. But that too can turn into an overbearing, unhealthy extreme, a tool of procrastination.

Magnus closes the book, smiles at Alec, “Where would you like to go?”

“Somewhere I’ve never been.” Alec easily states with a smile of his own.

When they stumble through the portal back into the apartment, falling over each other with laughter, four hours later, the warmth of the intense sunshine still tingling on their skin, sand in their shoes and hair, Magnus does not even think about what he is doing when he steadies Alec’s stance, reaches to caress Alec’s cheek, cupping it gently.

“Magnus?” Alec asks as the warlock’s eyes hold his steady.

Alec’s breath hitches in his throat as Alec feels his hand pressed with both of Magnus’s against the heart beating rapidly in the warlock’s chest.

“I am so fond of you. You make my days so much brighter.”

Alec stands frozen.

As Magnus takes a step closer, Alec takes one step back.

Magnus lets go of Alec’s hand. “Alexander?”

Alec takes in a sharp breath, eyes filling with tears, Alec turns before they fall, “I can’t.”

When Magnus manages to bring his feet to move again, follow Alec to his room, the door is closed. It hardly ever is.

Magnus has spent all this time preaching to Alec that he has a claim to his privacy, so with a heavy, crushing feeling in his chest Magnus leaves for his bedroom, his door stays wide open.

It is the first night in which they fall asleep again in separate beds.

Two full days they sit silently at meals, go their separate ways the rest of the day. Nothing but nervous glances and painfully polite conversation exchanged.

Then, in the middle of the next night, Magnus is woken up by someone crawling into bed next to him. Clearing his throat, rubbing at his eyes he asks into the darkness, “What’s going on?”

Alec’s voice is raw, “I got scared.”

“A nightmare?” Magnus asks still rubbing at his eyes, before trying to see Alec through the darkness of the room.

“When you told me you’re …fond of me.”

Just like that Magnus is wide awake, turns and reaches over to switch on a light but Alec stops him. “Please, no. I’m afraid I won’t say it if you’re … if you’re right there.”

“I am right here now,” Magnus points out.

“Can you just come closer? Hold me? I need to feel you.”

“Of course, sweetheart.”

They are twined with each other when Alec, breathing finally calm and even, dares to ask what he had not been able to think of two days ago, too entirely overwhelmed by the all too intense look in Magnus’s eyes, “What did you mean by fond of me?”

They are pressed so close now Magnus feels the full body shiver run through Alec as he answers, “I meant the more I get to know you the more I want to get to know you. I meant I’m falling for you, more and more. I meant I … I’m falling in love with you.”

“Why?”

It is not what Magnus had expected to hear, echoes, “Why?”

“I’m not worth it.”

Magnus takes in a sharp breath. “You so are. SO are.”

Alec bursts into sudden sobs in Magnus’s arms, “No.” The sobs drown out his next words at first, then, “How could I be? I’m so … so full of pain. Why would anyone want any part of that? I cannot stand in front of you and tell you that I am worth loving. I … I CAN’T!”

As he feels Magnus turn out of their embrace, Alec is afraid, more than anything, that Magnus finally does agree with him. Then there is the sound of a switch being flipped and a soft light suddenly fills the room, Alec can sense the change even with his eyes pressed shut.

When he brings himself to finally pry them open, a soft hand on his cheek silently whispering to him, Alec feels paralyzed as golden eyes meet his.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s not being perfect, Alexander, that makes anyone loveable. No one is that. It is being flawed, and honest in that, being you with yourself, sharing who you are and if that is in majority pain right now, then I will embrace you and your pain. And we will work it out … how you might be able to feel less pain and more joy in this life. Your life. If I should only be one stop in your journey I am okay with that. I am.”

“Magnus. Being with anyone, being me, alone or with anyone, scares me. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t take hurting me anymore. I can’t take any more pain. And being alive always means more pain ultimately. No matter how long I might manage to hold it at bay. I’m terrified … of that pain.”

Magnus keeps holding Alec, “Alexander, please don’t be afraid of me, and I …, you don’t have to be afraid for me.”

“What I feel for you is terrifying.”

Magnus frowns.

“It’s so much, so huge. I don’t know how to navigate any of it.”

Magnus’s gaze softens, “I know how you feel. It’s because you’re … you’ve been forcing yourself to hold it in, hold it all in.”

Alec swallows hard, as his eyes jump between Magnus’s golden gaze and lips.

It does not go unnoticed. “You don’t have to hold back anymore. I won’t hit you. I won’t run from you. I won’t make you torture yourself. I’d never ….”

“I want to believe you,” Alec whispers, as he shaking violently leans in. His breath stuck in his throat, as his lips dry and shaky press against Magnus’s.

His breath stutters in his chest, what little is left in it.

“Help me,” Alec whispers between their lips, his hands coming up to cup both of Magnus’s cheeks. “Guide me. Please. Magnus.”

Magnus feels Alec’s fingertips, his palms tremble against his skin.

Alec feels Magnus’s lips break into a warm smile against his, and he feels his own follow, all of him overwhelmed.

Their foreheads pressed together as Magnus’s hand weaves its way into the hair at the nape of Alec’s neck, Magnus pulls softly and Alec moans, as his lips fall open Magnus’s mouth is fully back on his, tongue slipping inside.

They find each other in lips moving together, moans growing louder until Magnus feels Alec’s hands push at his chest and he backs off instantly, with his heart racing. “You okay? Did I …?”

Alec buries himself against Magnus’s body, fully. “I am so fond of you.”

A shift of weight and as Magnus falls onto his back, arms holding Alec close still, a sudden dry sob against his chest turns into tears, and then Alec is sobbing harder than he ever has in Magnus’s arms.

“I’m … you’re, I’m allowed to, I’m …, I’m ….”

“You are,” Magnus reassures.

“Don’t let go.” His voice breaks as he repeats the urgent whisper, “Don’t let go of us.”

They wake up in bed, together, the next morning, and Alec does not feel the urge to run.

It is midday, both of them at their potions stations when Alec turns to Magnus, “Can I kiss you again?”

“Darlin’, is that why you’ve been vibrating out of your skin all morning?” Alec had dropped a mug at breakfast. Two eggs had slipped from his hands to the floor in Alec’s attempt to crack them open.

Alec nods nervously.

“I'd love nothing more,” Magnus hums softly.

One of the potions boils over, extinguishing the source of heat below it, another burns up in its entirety, going up in smoke and deep violet flames, as Magnus and Alec make out on the couch all afternoon, Alec enjoying the weight of Magnus settled on him, grounding more than his body against the couch.

As they eventually just lie there side by side, Alec’s head resting on Magnus’s chest, listening to the beat of Magnus’s heart, Alec licks his lips for a while, finally says, “My lips feel raw.”

Magnus presses a smile to Alec’s head of hair, happy laughter bubbling from his throat, “Mine too. … I know a spell.”

“No! No. I want the reminder, it’s real.”

Some days pass like this, the two innocently, unintentionally lost in each other.

One night in bed Alec states in wonder, “You holding me, kissing me, … I feel so much more sane. I didn’t, I hadn’t known it could feel, I could feel so …calm. Content. It is like that storm in me is slowly settling.

Tranquil waters. A quiet night sky. Stars. So many stars.”

Magnus wordlessly holds him close that night until Alec falls asleep. Whispers in the moment before, “I do too.”

The potions to be made and delivered have piled up over the last days, so the next few are busy.

Alec gets to watch Magnus work, with highest precision, at a mesmerizing speed. Magnus invites him to accompany him on several trips to deliver potions, creams, powders, gels.

“I had no idea you work in so many forms.”

Magnus pulls him into a soft kiss, smiles, “You’ve all the time to learn.”

A shiver Alec cannot explain runs through him, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Being ripped from his sleep in the middle of the night, the first emergency call Alec witnesses has him on edge for every second of it, in many ways a harsh reminder of the life he is trying to leave behind.

His nerves only settle when the warlock child who had been desperately sick with fever unable to keep down any food or drink for days already – Magnus finally finding the right potion, the child had been able to keep down – curls up in his lap, falling asleep, shortly after, against his chest.

Magnus smiles at him, fondness in his eyes.

“You did great.”

“I was just here,” Alec protests.

“Sometimes, a lot of the time actually, that alone makes all the difference.”

Two days later Alec also gets to watch Magnus use one of Alec’s own homemade potions to help heal some broken bones. Alec is not prepared for the exhilarating feeling it brings him.

“I love being able to help people.”

“Sweetheart, of course you do. You used to be a shadowhunter, a lot of that life was about helping people. Just … in different ways.”

“I prefer your way.”

“Our way,” Magnus corrects.

“Ours,” Alec smiles at him.

Then there is that day, after things have calmed down again, that Alec, to Magnus’s surprise, asks for a specific portal trip.

“There’s that forest, … in Norway.”

Moments later they are standing among green trees, towering above them.

Holding hands they just walk around for a while.

Alec stops in a clearing by a river bank, “There used to be a summer training camp for little shadowhunter kids and their parents here.”

“You were here,” with the faraway look Magnus finds in Alec’s eyes there is no question to it.

Alec still nods. His next words taking tangible effort, “I was tiny. Izzy was a baby still, Jace not even in my life. Nor Max of course. But … I was happy that summer, running around with toys, no one caring that I hung out with other boys. I didn’t know I was different then. I just belonged with my mum, my sister, even my f….” Alec’s voice shatters on the edges of the word.

Magnus pulls Alec close, and they stand there in the middle of the Norwegian wilderness, Alec sobbing.

The next week are potions and dates and travels, for fun those times, Magnus insists, and Alec, growing more and more into his role, finding meaning as bringer of relief not warrior dealing in the distribution of pain, really just trying to push down on his own, … Alec agrees, to all of them.

It takes some more days, a lot more making out, until Alec one night turns to Magnus in bed, “I need more.”

“More?” Magnus half-teases. “Alexander, I’m only teasing.”

“Well … don’t. I’m horny enough as it is.”

Magnus faux gasps.

Alec swats at his chest, “You told me to let you know when I thought I was ready to ….”

“Yeah?”

“To be more intimate.”

“More intimate? Whatever could you mean?”

Alec is not about to pull back now. Too long has been the waiting already in his life. “I want you to touch me, I want to touch you. All of you.”

Magnus’s gaze grows serious then, “Are you sure you’re ready?”

“Well not for everything possible, no. But I’m dying to feel you against me, feel all of you. Can we be naked together?”

Magnus is the one gulping now. “Alexander.”

“Yeah?”

Alec forgets to breath as Magnus’s hands slip under his T-shirt, skim over his stomach, up to his pecs, and Magnus teasingly flips at a nipple. “Oh my gosh,” the words are accompanied by a full body shudder.

Magnus lets out a warm laugh as he watches Alec struggle out of his shirt in record time then he quickly uses the opportunity to lose his own pyjama top.

Alec pulls Magnus against him again, chest to chest, naked from the waist up Magnus can feel just how much Alec is affected by this new physical intimacy, just how hard Alec is trembling. So Magnus pulls him into a drawn out kiss.

“It’s a lot. I know.”

“Is it always like this?” At Magnus questioning look Alec adds, “This intense.”

Magnus’s eyes are blazing, “Only with the right person.”

They just kiss shirtless, for a long time, then Alec’s hand skims over Magnus left shoulder and Alec feels Magnus tense, tense in the worst of ways.

“What’s wrong?”

Magnus, eyes wide, just sucks in shallow breath after shallow breath, before it all rushes from his chest with tears quelling from his unblinking eyes in waterfalls.

“Magnus? Hey, hey!”

Magnus tries to hide his eyes, suddenly shrinks back, body curving into itself.

“Magnus. Stay with me, please. You don’t have to hide from me.”

He still stutters out fractured breaths as Alec lets go of him.

There are moments of silence, then Alec hears Magnus clear his throat, “I’m sorry. A … a sore spot.”

“Don’t apologize. You know better than anyone, I hold records in acquiring those, tending to them. Let me help you tend to yours? Please?”

Magnus’s pain slips onto his face, is still burning in his eyes as he scoots closer to Alec again, allows to be touched.

Alec is careful to stick to the parts he feels confident are none triggering for Magnus, his hair, his face, holding hands. He waits. Waits for Magnus to breathe again, even, steady.

“He had always insisted on teaching me himself. I was having a bad day, unfocused. I was six. I was meant to learn through the making of mistakes, every child should be afforded that. I just could not make the spell work. He reached for the next best thing lying around, sent a pulse of magic into it, … drove that burning dagger into my shoulder in his blind rage,” Magnus pushes forward his left shoulder, turns a little to allow Alec to see the thick line, frayed at the edges, where the flames had licked at the skin, “He … kept it there, kept twisting at it, to see if he could break me, make me beg for him to stop. I never did. I kept focusing on the taste of blood flooding my mouth. … I couldn’t eat properly for days after, hadn’t learned yet to heal myself. Never fully healed again. Well, … my tongue did.”

“Who was he?”

“My demon of a father. You can take that literal.”

Where there is one story there are more, Alec knows all too well. “I want to hear all you want to share, need to share.”

Magnus’s eyes are wide and vulnerable, “Everything?”

“Your memories. Your hopes, your dreams and your disappointments. … YOUR pain.”

Alec leans forward, never losing eye contact with Magnus he presses his lips to the scar in a kiss.

Fresh tears fall, and Magnus is finally ready to allow himself to embrace the thought as a reality, his reality, “I love you.”

Alec gulps, stares. “I love you.” His heart hammers uncontrollably in his chest.

It is the first night of Alec as the big spoon, helping Magnus hold himself together.

Waking up in the cocoon of Alec’s body and arms Magnus feels safe. For the first time in a long time feels seen. Holding onto Alec’s arms around him Magnus whispers to himself, into the room, into the darkness, to a still sleeping Alec, “You get me. You actually get me.”

The talks that follow, the make-outs too, are long. The nights get later and later, the feeling of closeness grows, on both sides now, equally.

It is on one afternoon, towards the end of this week, that Magnus finds Alec really mess up a potion for the first time, while starring off into space. “Alexander?”

“Mh?”

“Your potion.”

“Oh crap! I take it it should not be eating straight through the wooden spoon?”

Magnus’s gaze is full of sympathy when he replies, “I mean I’ve been there, but … no. No, definitely not, sweetheart.”

Alec huffs.

“What had you so captivated?”

“Thinking.”

“About ….”

“Maybe giving Izzy a call.”

Magnus turns his undivided attention to “Alexander, it’s a cliche, but it is one for a reason: if it feels right, mostly feels right to do, that means you are likely ready to do it. Don’t think about me, or anyone. Be honest with yourself.”

Alec sighs, “I think I should wait a little longer.”

It is some days later that Alec hangs up on his mother spontaneously answering Izzy’s phone; … that Alec redials the number, listens to a call connect that is the beginning of the end of everything he had ever believed to be true about his mother.

“Hello? Maryse Lightwood speaking. Did we get disconnected a moment ago?”

‘For better. For worse.’ Alec’s voice shakes only more from how hard he tries to hold it steady,“… really, it’s been longer than that.”

“Alec?”

Alec expects the pain. He does not expect to find out that there had been a way out of his loneliness, the utter misery, MUCH sooner, if only people around him, those responsible adults, as they self-righteously want to be known, had thought about more than themselves first.

For the longest time Alec Lightwood had believed that there could never be any possible end to his pain.

For weeks now a certain downworlder has stood by his side, provided him with room to breathe, aided him in re-educating himself, retraining his ingrained responses, expanding his mind. Leading Alec, lying awake beside the warlock one night, to conclude for himself that even though he ultimately is the one doing the hard work on himself – as anyone needs to – that ‘… before you there simply had been no way out for me, not on my own.’

He is about to learn that he is only half right there.

Gaining perspective, sometimes, … just sucks.

But it is what responsible parents provide, perspective.

Alec Lightwood had never though that his mother Maryse deciding to become a responsible adult could ever leave him this heartbroken, make him this angry.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO!!  
> So I, um, yeah, blame the chapter? :) Which turned while writing over the last two months since my last post into like five rolled into one. Never felt right to post it in parts. I hope you don't mind too much. My apologies for the long wait. Although of course it had nothing on that insane hiatus. How great was that all new Shadowhunters episode, 3x11, though! I enjoyed it way more than I had bargained for. And of course all the new lovely fanfics it will spark. Yes!!  
> I finished the book series just in time to lean back now and debate with myself which changes they made I like and which I despise. If you have any opinions to share there I'd love to talk. Feel free to message me.  
> Now, finally, you've waited more than long enough, enjoy the read.  
> xo Vy

Alec closes his eyes, tries his best to focus. Feeling utterly unprepared he says, “It’s me.”

  
“Oh, Alec! I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

  
Alec cannot help the frown forming, “You are?”

  
“Of course I am. What kind of question is that?”

Silence spreads between the two of them, threatens to end this tentative connection before it even gets half a chance to fully form again.

The confusing dread Alec feels has him reaching first, “I was trying to …. Is Izzy there?”

“She’s at a meeting, in Idris. All the heads of the institutes were asked to attend. Jace reached out to me, asked for me to come visit.”

“Why?” When Alec’s question is met only with silence he adds a tentative, “Mom?”

“I think he didn’t …,” a sigh, “He didn’t want to tell me over the phone.”

Alec’s nerves flare up. “Tell you what?”

“What your father has done.”

Alec feels already sick when he asks, “What has Robert done?”

“Alec,” her voice breaks, “what he has done to you.”

Silence.

“Alec?”

Silence.

“Alexander?” The silence lasting Maryse begs, “Please talk to me. Please!”

“You …, you want to?”

“I want more than that. I want to see you.” When Alec grows all too quiet again she adds, “I do, I always have.”

‘Always?’ Alec thinks, frowns, startles violently as the front door suddenly opens. Alec almost chokes on the rush of air sucked into his lungs.

Magnus steps in.

Alec breathes out.

Remembering the phone in his hand, the person on the other end of it, Alec says, “Okay. When?”

“Tomorrow?”

Alec is certain he cannot spend a whole night worrying about what might come to be, so he blurts out, “How about today? In two hours? I know a café.”

“Oh, um, yes. Okay. I’ll shift around my appointments.”

Alec releases a sudden puff of air, his surprise tangible, his ‘Mother is willing to change her previously made plans? … for me.’

“Alec? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m …, um, Jace has my number, I’ll send him the details for you. Goodbye.”

“I can’t wait to see you.”

Alec has hung up before Maryse can say any more or expect a reply. He has no words for so many things welling up in him already after only a handful of exchanges with her. This meeting could be such a bad idea.

When he looks up from his screen he flinches. A worried looking Magnus is standing right in front of him.

Magnus tentatively reaches out, hand running soothingly alongside a cheek, “Darlin’. What’s wrong? You look shell-shocked.”

“I tried calling Izzy.”

Magnus nods in quiet acknowledgement, waits.

“My mother answered.”

“Oh?”

“She wants to see me.” Alec does not, cannot bring himself to give Magnus time to respond, ‘needs to be my decision,’ he cannot risk resenting Magnus for a decision that he has to take himself, as well as its potential consequences. So Alec adds in a rush, “I’m going to meet her.”

Magnus hums.

“That’s …, could you …, would you …? … come along? I mean.”

“You want me there?”

Alec reaches to take the hand resting against his cheek in his. Fingers thoroughly intertwined he gulps, voice cracking breathes out, “I need you there. Will you come? I can’t have her here. But … I need you! I know that is so selfish of me. I’m sorry.”

Magnus presses a tender, reassuring kiss to Alec’s lips, “It’s not selfish, caring for yourself. It’s good. It’s what everyone needs to do for themselves, and it’s not an easy thing.” He presses another kiss to Alec’s lips, “I wouldn’t miss it.” As he draws him completely into his arms Magnus feels some of the unbearable tension, held visibly so far in Alec's stiff posture, leave Alec’s body.

The café Alec has picked is far enough away from the apartment that Alec feels safe meeting someone there he cannot be fully sure he wants to see, wants in what is starting to feel like ‘… like a life. For me this time. Mine.’ It is close enough that it gives him some time to mentally prepare before they have to leave.

He does not shower, shave, or change his clothes. He knows he needs to go into this without pretence.

Anything else, trying to put on a pleasing display for the woman who just ‘… just left me, us,’ years ago but still. The woman who he has hardly seen since. It would crush him, ‘Destroy …,’ Alec is unsure what, but something inside him that he feels the feverish need to guard.

They will be eleven minutes late by the time they walk through the doors of the cosy shop.

The real reason? It takes Alec more courage to actually leave the apartment to come here when it is time than he had expected it to. His emotions are all over the place, uncooperative … on all levels. To the extent that he has no idea anymore what he is feeling.

One thing he does know, the animal in him is restless as it had always been sensing Robert nearby in the confines of the institute. ‘That cage …,’ being plunged back into the memory of it, would usually easily be enough for Alec to turn around and run in the opposite direction, as far away from the place he knows he is sure to encounter it. But Magnus is by his side, and Alec …, Alec is not the same person he was before he met his boyfriend.

‘No more running from problems,’ Alec cautions himself. You make changes, solve problems in the process, meet new people, leave people behind. Even family. ‘… no more running.’ Your reality begins in your head.  
The way Alec feels about his mother, all the open questions and unresolved feelings …. He is not ready to leave her behind, not yet. He feels ready enough, however, to find out more, so that ‘So that I can decide … what to do next.’ He does not dare think it, but … who to leave behind. It is not a question of wanting her in his life or not, far more than that is at stake for Alec, and he is painfully aware.

“We’re here,” Magnus states calmly.

Alec had not noticed how far they had walked already, allowing himself to be guided, mostly, by Magnus. Alec looks up from the pavement, crushingly aware how nervous he must appear. He certainly feels it too, feels the sweat pouring from his hand held securely in Magnus’s. The warlock showing no sign of letting go.

A little bell above the door chimes as they enter the café.

Magnus studies Alec, as Alec studies the room.

Alec is seemingly certain his mother would have been on time. Magnus can tell when Alec has spotted her as the grip on his hand tightens, Alec otherwise growing ‘Too still’ beside him.

He simply stares ahead for some moments more before the woman in a far corner of the café spots him as well. “Alec!” She jumps up and hurries over, just to stop and stand there, too now hesitant.

‘A multitude of emotions kicking in, overwhelming, every single one of them,’ Magnus has had his fair share of reunions over the centuries, wanted and accidental.

Alec keeps starring, since he last saw her she has changed. It is not just her bob of hair, colourful as he has never seen it in its deep lilac tones that draws Alec’s attention. ‘Your smile!’

The mother Alec remembers had not smiled at anyone this openly, unguarded, not ‘… not since Izzy’s early childhood days.’ Alec desperately tries to recall the face of the mother he once knew … happy. He cannot, and an uneasy feeling settles firmly in his stomach. Alec still presses forward, “Hi.”

The answer is instant and soft, “Hello.”

Alec sees the moment his mother’s eyes shift from his face, down to the hand intertwined with Magnus’s, then up again to meet Magnus’s eyes. He watches, his stomach slowly twisting itself firmer into evermore tightly wound knots, painful.

He waits for the disgust, for disapproval to spread, for the open, genuine smile on his mother’s face to slip into something much more sinister.

He frowns in confusion when instead the woman, still smiling, ‘Smiling even wider?’ stretches out a hand.

“Maryse Lightwood.”

“Magnus Bane.”

“Pleasure.” Already motioning for them to follow, she turns and starts the walk back to her table, their table.

Profoundly confused Alec does follow.

Holding on tightly to Alec’s hand with both of his own now, Magnus simply states with reassuring decisiveness, “We can always leave, any time. Just say the word.”

Alec still following his mother’s footsteps can only find it in himself to nod, lump in his throat swelling.

They sit awkwardly, Alec’s head down, the same way Magnus had first seen Alec that night Robert had brought him to the apartment. Magnus cannot stand to see Alec retreat into himself like that again, even just for a moment, so he jumps right into action, “Maryse, what would you like to drink? I can bring it along.”

“A simple black coffee would be wonderful, thank you.”

‘So not everything has changed,’ Alec thinks, briefly glancing up at his mother before Magnus’s hand gently squeezing his shoulder draws his attention. The warm smile he is met with eases some of the pain shooting through his body’s tense nerves.

“Do you know yet?”

Alec shakes his head.

“Me neither, let’s have a look together.”

Maryse watches them walk away, sees Alec relax with every step further ‘… from me. I can’t blame you, my baby. I know it is all my fault.’

Staring off into space, she is shaken from the darker thoughts she slips into when Magnus and Alec reappear with the hot drinks. “Thank you.” They all take a couple of sips in silence, then Maryse asks, “How are you, sweetheart?”

Alec had had plans before coming here. Plans to stay calm, plans to be polite, plans to not show just how angry, how hurt he has been deep down all along, ever since she left. One ill-advised word from his mother and those plans are all history. “Don’t call me that! You can’t just come back and call me that.”

Maryse swallows, stares down into her steaming coffee, “I’m sorry.”

There need to be lines in every relationship, they are healthy and helpful, and in the best ones reliable; that much Alec has already learned from Magnus, from being with Magnus, equals. Alec feels the strong urge to draw the lines himself in his relationship to his mother, ‘If there’s going to be one.' “I’ve moved in with Magnus.”

“Jace told me.”

“Right,” Alec’s gaze fixes on the table top as Maryse tries to make lasting eye contact, “what else exactly has he told you?”

“What you have told him.”

“Which is?” Alec needs to hear from her what it is that his mother thinks she knows without him prompting any part of it. He does not want to fool himself into feeling understood. He knows he wants it too much. Understanding, appreciation, love – all of it. Especially from his mother. There is simply too much time to make up for, always will be. But more than that, he cannot stomach any more misconceptions, any new misunderstandings, outright lies.

“Alec, I came here three weeks ago.”

Alec’s frown deepens as he looks up at her, “You said you came to hold down the fort for Izzy.”

“I did, she needed a break. You leaving affected her more than she was willing to admit, so Jace … called. Me. Not that I’m saying you shouldn’t have. Left, I mean.”

Alec barely keeps the thought in, ‘You have nerve talking to me about my leaving having consequences. Have you ever stopped to ….’ Anger and resentment bubbling under the surface slowly but steadily begin to rise in him as he keeps listening to his mother talking on and on about that group of people he was born into. That group of people that does feel less and less like family, now that Alec has met Magnus and Catarina, is getting to know true warmth and mutual appreciation, support.

“She went back to work a couple days ago. I decided to stick around, be available for some days more, stepped in again when the sudden call to Idris came. Mostly, I was still hoping you might reach out somehow. And you did.” Her eyes are wide with pleased surprise just recalling it.

“You haven’t really answered my question.”

She breathes deep, as if bracing herself, reaches for the answer, “Jace said Robert had asked a downworlder to … to fix you.”

Alec’s eyes bore into hers, his voice raised, Alec hurt above all, “So you think I need fixing!”

“NO! Swee…,” she breaks off faced with her eldest son’s glare, tries anew, “Alexander, of course I don’t think so!”

“Of course? What DO you think then?” He knows now with the utmost certainty he cannot let people off easy anymore, especially the ones that have had part in causing him so much pain.

“I think your father ….”

“DON’T!” Alec’s hand comes down on the table in a fist, the teaspoons on the table clattering, some of their drinks spilling over. The reminder that his pain is by no means a thing of the past bursts forward without Alec even meaning it to. Alec notices Magnus instantly moving his chair closer so he can put an arm around Alec’s middle, pull him against himself, run his palm soothingly along Alec’s side. "Magnus."

"I'm here, darlin'. It's okay."

“Don’t what?” Maryse asks not unkindly but with genuine interest and uncertainty.

Alec is unaware of the eyes all around the café now on their table, “He isn’t ... that. Not to me. Not anymore, never NEVER again.”

“It’s okay. I’m here. We’re here, together. She can’t take you back, she knows that,” Magnus attempts to sooth worries further, all too aware of their surroundings, keeping a watchful eye on them. Just in case. Especially with Alec so intensely emotionally compromised.

They had talked about them, only days ago, one of those late night talks, lying next to each other in bed, about the things they are most afraid of. Magnus remembers Alec’s tearful words clear as day: _“What if they drag me back there? What if they lock me away until I die, … or they decide to … to kill me.”_

 _“I won’t let them do anything to you,”_ Magnus’s own answer had been sharp and clearcut. The kind of answer Alec had needed in that moment. The full truth is … Magnus is afraid too. He wants to think the best of anyone. However, Magnus has seen too much of human history not to be, not to think, to know too many measures of pain and cruelty possible.

Magnus tries his best to read the woman opposite them. Maryse is ‘… genuinely surprised?’ by the extent of pain and anger Alec is experiencing, expressing. He wonders what she might have expected. ‘For him to hold it all in? Like a good little shadowhunter? For the wounds to have healed already?’ Magnus cannot help but wonder how much she really knew, ‘You were married. Don’t you know anything about that man’s despicable nature? Was he that much of a different person with you?’

Of course, picking up on some of Magnus’s reassuring words, spoken quietly to Alec, yet drifting over to her, what Maryse manages to do next is say the exact wrong thing. “I’m not here to take anything from you.”

Angry tears are freely spilling from Alec’s eyes, “You say that like you have never taken anything from me, when you have taken Everything! You allowed HIM to TAKE ME,” Alec’s voice momentarily gives way under the strain of his tears. “ … from me!”

Maryse’s eyes are wide, her lips trembling with the attempt to form and hold back words all at the same time. She manages some shallow gasps for air, pulled in, pushed out. No words.

“I thought Jace had told you?” Alec’s tone is almost mocking, like he had expected no less than inadequacy from this woman. Like anything else would somehow, in a twisted way, have disappointed him.

“That your ….” She does not get to finish.

“Jace doesn’t know the half of it! Knows nothing about what it was like. He came to find me once, after Robert had hurt me so bad … Jace’s parabatai rune was acting up. It felt to him like I was dying he said. What do you think that felt like to me? I was never the same after that night. There was, there IS that dark corner in my mind. I spent _forever_ living in it alone. Did you know you can forget what happy feels like? Jace does know NOTHING about what it was like h… ha..ving to … to ….”

Magnus presses a long lasting kiss to Alec’s temple, ‘I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. I’m here.’

Alec turns over to him, allows Magnus to hold him close for a brief moment. As a supressed sob breaks free from his throat Alec hurriedly stands up on shaky legs, rushes to the restroom.

Magnus throws a polite “Excuse me,” Maryse’s way as he hurries after Alec. He is already halfway to the restroom as Maryse manages to turn and stare after them both.

  
Alec’s eyes are red and raw and the lighting in the restaurant hurts them as he steps back into it from the more dimly lit restroom eight minutes later. Magnus is right beside him.

There are droplets of water still clinging to the tips of his hair, from splashing cool water onto his face to calm himself down, to try and make the sting in his eyes lessen. Despite drying himself off everything feels too wet still. His eyes feel too dry, itchy.

Approaching the table, Maryse’s back is to them. She is sitting completely still, her coffee having remained almost untouched, no doubt now stone cold. Coming closer Alec can see her hands are clasped tightly in her lap. Her posture appearing a stern one. Closed up, as Alec used to make himself be, too. He too often still finds himself slipping back into it, by accident these days, closing himself off from his surroundings, from Magnus – and these are only the times he notices. Alec expects a stoic face, a superior attitude, a telling off for his running off like that to accompany this posture as he fully rounds the table to sit back in his chair.

Reality comes as a genuine shock, accompanied, as his mother begins to speak again, by the realization of how little he himself actually knows about his own family, its dark dynamics.

“Mom?” he asks, his voice truly soft for the first time while addressing her, as he sees tears silently slipping from her eyes, her knuckles now white, hands squeezing each other that hard.

“Jace did not have to tell me anything. Not a thing.” She chokes on her next words in her first attempt to bring them out, “I kn… I knew.”

Alec’s brain actively fights his catching on. “No. No you didn’t. You Didn’t!” He is back on his feet, like his mind cannot bear having to sit there and just take it.

“I have no excuses, Alec. I was a bad mother.”

“WAS?” he shouts on impulse, own eyes instantly wide at his tone, his volume. People are looking over again, this time he does notice, swallows his anger back down, sits down at the table. Breaths shallow.

“You’re right. In everything. I AM a bad mother to you. I’m trying my best … with ….”

“Max,” Alec snaps at her, shaking his head.

“I’d like to do better by you.”

Alec is still hung up on the thought of his little brother, “Is that why you left him? For Max’s sake?” Already while asking the question Alec feels sick and ashamed at the thought that had first rushed right into the forefront of his mind, ‘You didn’t for me. Was I not worth it to you?’

Maryse shakes her head at herself, “I should’ve taken all of you with me. I wasn’t strong enough. I took Max and ran. I couldn’t let him … I needed to make sure that no one would do to him what had been done to … . And I AM to blame for everything that has happened to you since. ” A sob, “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry I fooled myself into thinking my leaving would solve the problem. That Izzy, Jace and you being together would make it safer for all of you to be there than with me.”

“No one kept me safe,” Alec grits out between his teeth, despairing at the thought. “Izzy and Jace were children too in that place, how could you know and leave them with that monster?”

Maryse grabs for her jacket and handbag. As sobs take her over she is already running from the café. She does not look back.

Alec stares after her. Keeps starring at the spot she disappeared from for a long time after.

Eyes on his boyfriend, Magnus keeps holding both of Alec’s hands in his, a grounding presence that Alec is endlessly thankful for.

Alec is reminded of himself ‘… running, running,’ all his life from so many things, so many people, ‘… myself.’

“I’m here. Darlin’?”

A sharp pain runs through Alec’s chest as he realizes what he is feeling is sympathy for the woman who abandoned him and his siblings. It is the last thing he wants to feel, and on instinct he tries to push it far away, attempts to bury it amongst all the justifiable anger he is feeling too. He cannot.

“Why can’t I just hate her?”

“It’s painfully hard to stop loving someone. Especially the people whose love you cannot help wanting. I’ve tried. Many a time, darlin’. For a long time.”

Alec’s watery eyes shift to Magnus’s openly golden ones, ‘Golden for me,’ Alec knows, only for him. He had confessed to it last night: the two separating after an intense kiss, Alec holding on to Magnus’s gaze, “It is so comforting, getting to look into your real eyes.” And Magnus is nothing if not attentive, plays his cards well. Alec loves that kind of reliable. With his parents he had only known a very different kind, one that brings new pains each time, not the kind taking old ones.

“Home?”

“Please.”

Alec does not question it as Magnus clears their table and they start walking again towards the restroom.

When Magnus opens the door for them they step through a portal right into their apartment.

Not two steps in Alec wrings from his throat, “I need a shower.” There is a feeling boiling inside him Alec does not fully understand but needs to try and scrub off himself, before it can eat away at him any more than it already has.

Magnus feels Alec let go, watches him walk away. With a deep breath the warlock flexes his fingers, blue sparks simmering at the tips.

A fluffy towel and Alec’s favourite pyjamas are already in the bathroom when Alec enters it.

Magnus hears a strained, watery “Thank you,” drift over to him.

Even through the now closed bathroom door Magnus can hear Alec’s sudden sobbing begin.

He heaves a pained breath, knowing if Alec wanted him there ‘ … he would have asked me to not leave his side.’ So Magnus heavy heartedly busies himself in the kitchen, throws together a quick vegetable soup, makes some fresh peppermint ginger tea too. Places it on the little portable metallic stove with a candle in it to keep it warm for hours to come. He has a feeling this might end up being ‘ … a long evening, a long night.’

Magnus knows to leave Alec space, give him time, but by the time he has to reheat the soup, and the candle in the little stove is about to burn out, the sounds of the shower long stopped but Alec still to reemerge from the bathroom, Magnus loses his nerve.

He turns the stove back off, extinguishes the candle and leaves the kitchen for the bathroom. Magnus tentatively tries the bathroom door’s handle, he pushes it down, door clearly unlocked opening with ease.

“Darling?”

Alec has not heard him, sitting there on the edge of the bathtub still in nothing more than a towel around his hips, hair dried on its own accord again by now a curly mess.

Magnus hardly notices any of this at first, all he can see is the razor clutched tightly in Alec’s hand, Alec slashing tentatively at his stomach’s skin, shallow cuts, the blood pooling in them, some droplets dripping, smearing against Alec’s arm as he keeps scraping at the dark marks, covering them, drowning them out in red.

Magnus kneels down in front of Alec, slowly reaches for the razor, slips it from Alec’s hand, “Alexander, my darling.”

Alec looks up at Magnus for the first time since the warlock has entered the room, shudders, tears rolling from reddened eyes, gaze unfocused and glassy.

“Oh darling.” Magnus reaches up with one hand, is still wiping away some freshly flowing tears when he hears Alec’s words.

“Why are you crying?”

Magnus had not noticed he was until Alec had asked. The anwer comes easy, “It hurts to see you in such pain.”

Alec's voice is strained, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry, Magnus. I’m sorry.”

“My love, don’t, you have nothing to apologize for. It’s not you who makes me sad, it’s this world we live in. I so wish, I just SO wish I could give you something that could help you more than having to resort to this. But I understand. And yet I cannot help but feel I _am_ failing you.”

“Magnus, you’re not failing me. Look at me.”

Magnus lifts his eyes from where they had drifted over to the razor placed to the side.

“The cuts,” Magnus eyes jump to them as Alec goes on, “shallow, scraping. And only that. I used to cut to the bone. For years.”

Magnus cups Alec’s cheeks with both hands, places a kiss to his shadowhunter’s lips, they are dry and somehow still taste of tears.

Alec’s towel falls away as he stands. This is not how he had envisioned being naked in front of his boyfriend for the first time. But he feels too utterly drained to be embarrassed.

Magnus strips off his own clothes, then helps Alec back into the shower, climbs in it with him.

Alec watches as the blood turns into a red tinted stream falling away with Magnus’s first tender movements of gently running some water along Alec’s stomach, the harshness of the showerhead's pressure mediated by Magnus's hand breaking the streams force. The pure liquid applied with care still stings in every single cut. Where pain used to bring him relief all he feels this time around is the discomfort of the burning pain itself. And as Magnus’s next gliding motions across Alec’s stomach lay bare his marks fully again Alec stutters through several shallow breaths. Unsettling is a mild expression for how this new old view has Alec feeling.

“Hold on to me, darling, it’s okay. We just need to clean out your wounds with water for some minutes before I can dress them.” Magnus lets out a relieved breath when he feels Alec’s hands grab a hold of his shoulders to steady himself.

They silently make their way to the bedroom, Alec lies down on his back and Magnus gets out a fresh towel to gently pat all of Alec’s wounds dry. “Just getting rid of the water, then some bandages. I won’t do any more if you don’t want me to. I promise.”

Alec swallows, nods, “Okay.”

“Okay if I use my magic to dry the rest of us, get us some PJs?”

Alec nods, “Yeah.”

Magnus wiggles his fingers, blue sparks fly, and Alec and Magnus are both dry all over and in their PJ bottoms.

Wounds cleaned and dry Magnus dresses them.

Noticing how Alec’s breathing substantially evens with each dressing applied to his body, his runes, Magnus goes on to cover up all of Alec’s runes not yet cut into pieces or scraped raw, has even Alec sit up for a moment to cover those on his back, asks “Shirt?”

When Alec nods Magnus magically fits them out with some wide comfortable shirts.

Magnus has cleared all supplies away, is about to lie down next to Alec, but as Magnus climbs back onto the covers and reaches out for Alec’s hand, Alec turns away from him, sits up at the side of the bed, back bowed, face hidden away in his hands, as he works for each breath to keep entering his body.

Magnus scoots over to him, sees the tears drip from between Alec’s hands, the man otherwise perfectly, frighteningly still.

“Nothing had even happened. I can’t stop. I’ll keep doing it, and one day you won’t be here, I’ll just slip deep again and bleed out on the bathroom floor. I don’t want to die like that. I’m so scared.”

“Darling so much has happened today with Maryse.” Beyond that statement, a neutral observation of fact, Magnus still heard it all, cannot not see it, clear as day unfold in front of him, his inner eye. He can do nothing but stare right at the horror, this could easily have been tonight, their present:

 

* * *

  
_Heavy teapot still in hand, just about to place it on the stove, he hears wet footsteps and turns._

  
_The pot crashes to the floor as Magnus abandons it in mid-air, running to Alec, pressing both his hands against Alec’s naked chest, the blood seeping through his fingers in the blink of an eye._

_It is all Magnus knows in this moment, ‘Too much blood.’_

_Alec is pale and faint, the rose towel around his hips is half stained blood red already._

_Magnus knows he should have but his brain feels so muddled he does not anticipate Alec’s fall. The man crashing onto the kitchen floor, limbs breaking away under him. Alec is drunk on the rushing sudden loss of blood from his body._

_“Magnus?” Alec holds on to the sad and frightened golden eyes for as long as he can, before his senses are swallowed up in heavy darkness._

_When Alec comes to again he is no longer on the kitchen floor but in a familiar bed, in familiar arms. A soft material is covering all of him. ‘Pyjamas,’ his mind catches on after a moment’s irritation. The first thing he hears is a tearful whisper, “I’m so sorry.”_

_Alec produces solely a fit of coughs as he tries to speak._

_Magnus, quickly conjures up a glass of water, guides Alec to drink some. He sounds unsettled, ashamed, as he begins to ramble, “I’m so sorry, Alexander. You were losing blood so fast, there was nothing else I could do. There was no time to call Cat.”_

_“Magnus?” Alec brings out confused and exhausted, as Magnus falls silent. “I don’t unde….”_

_“Don’t hate me!” Magnus begs as he tentatively reaches for the buttons of Alec’s pyjama top and undoes them hesitant, slow, one by one, as if what he is about to reveal will be a most gruesome sight._

_Alec blinks, as Magnus pushes the fabric apart, looks down at himself, “You ….”_

_“Don’t hate me, please. I had to stop the bleeding. I couldn’t let you …. I couldn’t, Alexander!”_

_Alec looks up from the runes on his torso, hands beginning to itch and shake as he looks back up at Magnus, tries to focus on Magnus’s eyes, “I did cut them up in the shower, didn’t I?”_

_Magnus, crying, nods._

_Alec looks pale and shocked and angry. Magnus does not know at who or what anymore._

* * *

 

 

Magnus fears this is what the beginning of the end might look like for them one day, if they let it happen, let things go on.

  
“Alexander, darling,” the Magnus present in the here and now, beyond Magnus’s waking nightmare is audibly in heavy tears himself now, “SO MUCH happened with your mother. And I’m sorry, I am SO SORRY, darling, that all I can offer you is to just put them back together, put you back together. I know it’s not what you want for yourself. I understand now, you need the ability, the possibility to grow and they are holding you back.”

Magnus has all further thought knocked out of him as Alec turns to look at him and pushes himself into Magnus’s embrace, holds on as tightly as he can, Alec trembling, Magnus sobbing.

  
Magnus keeps holding on, even as Alec’s arms give out.

Magnus holds on as they lie back down together.

Magnus holds on until Alec is ready to say, “I don’t want you to have to worry about finding me dead on the bathroom floor, because I keep cutting up my runes, go or slip too deep. You shouldn’t have to keep saving me.”

“Alexander, that’s what relationships are. People saving each other. People deciding to keep saving each other in small things and in the big ones. Despite everything this world is and brings. Opening yourself up to anyone is so brave. You are so brave, my darling.”

Alec shudders in Magnus’s arms, new tears. “I don’t blame you for wanting to heal parts of me. But in the long run that won’t fix anything. … I need … I NEED them gone. They might be mine, but they have never been me.”

Magnus tries to find something to say, anything. But he cannot form a single thought that makes sense to him as he feels the tension build again in Alec’s body, reaching its peak with Alec’s next words.

There is resolve not relief in the thought finding expression, “They can do it.” It is the obvious choice, and maybe the most terrifying one.

“No!” Magnus’s protest is instant. “I’ve heard, I’ve read about how they take runes, they want it to be a punishment for you.”

“It can’t hurt more than having to look at them every day,” Alec whispers into the quiet between them.

Magnus kisses whatever part of Alec he can reach without having to let go as he says, “I’m so sorry I can’t take away your pain. I’m so sorry. I know you live with it every minute of every day.”

“Not anymore. I used to in the institute there was nothing else, but … Not with you. Not when you … when I …, when we are, together. That is so much already. But I just know I’ll never get to be me with them there. Cat said to make the changes I need. True changes.”

“We’ll think of something. We’ll figure it out. Without The Council. They have taken so much from you. I can’t let other shadowhunters retraumatise you by ripping the marks of your body in the cruellest possible ways they can imagine.”

Alec shudders, buries deeper into Magnus’s embrace, “I love you.”

Magnus pulls a blanket over them, leans in and kisses Alec’s forehead, mouths the words against his skin, “I love you.”

Alec lifts his eyes to meet Magnus’s, “Cat also said to be honest. Of COURSE I don’t want them to prod at me, touch me, hurt me. What if Robert decides to get involved? And he would!"

Alec looks like he is going to be physically sick, Magnus notes with sadness.

“And my mother? After today I have no idea who she even really is anymore.” Alec feels sick to his stomach. “… and Jace. I don’t want him to get hurt, to suffer for me. … but Magnus, I NEED my runes gone. I don’t know how. And I don’t know how to keep my parabatai unharmed doing it.”

“I need _you_ unharmed,” Magnus softly murmurs as they lie there, “your soul. I’ll find a way and keep you safe.”

Alec falls asleep curled up in Magnus’s arms. Not an easy task tonight, he knows Magnus meant well patching him up all over, literally, but the feel of each pad on his skin is beginning to irritate his already stretched thin nerves.

Alec has long fallen asleep, Magnus only letting go of his boyfriend hours later, exhaustion finally having dragged him into the deepest corners of his own mind.

The soup and tea are long forgotten, still standing now ice cold on the kitchen counter.

It is the middle of the night still when Alec bolts up with a sharp breath, eyes flying wide open. Falling back into the sheets with an exhausted exhale, looking over at Magnus, making sure he is still fast asleep, Alec turns his head back to stare ahead at the ceiling, or rather the darkness covering it. It is there and then that a decision is made.

Time passes. A lot? Only a little? Alec cannot tell nor care.

Eventually he turns onto his side, reaches out, runs a hand through Magnus’s hair, whispers, “Magnus?”

Magnus stays sound asleep, exhaustion having him tight in its grip.

‘Good,’ Alec thinks, risks placing a kiss to his boyfriend’s forehead, gets up, tiptoes out of the room, closing the door behind himself, grabs a hoodie draped over a nearby chair and pulls it on, zipping it up fully. The night air is much colder than he had felt under the covers with Magnus.

Alec finds his phone on the kitchen table, dials the number that he memorized the day he had received it, feeling he would need it one day accessible to him whether he had his phone on him or not. “Please, please! I need to see you. It’s me, Alec,” he half-whispers into the phone and while making the call having wandered into the living room slumps down on the couch, doing his best to focus on his breaths, on keeping them coming, on keeping them even. The last thing he needs now is to slip into a panic.

Magnus’s portals when they go on their travels are ‘ … bright and vibrant, drawing attention, enticing, deliberately so’ Alec thinks for the first time as he sees a much different kind of portal from a different warlock open by the front door in its almost translucent turquoise shimmer, a soft whitish tone to it.

Alec rushes up from the couch and then just stands there, vulnerable, openly so, as “Catarina,” steps through the portal.

She looks worried, is frowning as she steps closer, looks Alec over, looks for a visible clue.

Alec just keeps standing there, fingernails digging into the hoodie’s sleeves, eyes imploring, as if should he just stare hard enough Catarina would know without him having to put the idea, his plea into words. Thinking them hurts too much already – the distinct feel of a betrayal to them.

“Alec,” she does not miss how spooked he looks as soon as she speaks his name. She looks around for a moment, “Magnus is asleep?”

Alec nods feverishly, needing to trust it is still true. ‘You can’t be part of this. You can’t! I can’t put this on you.’

Cat notices quickly Alec is somewhere between this and his own world. “Need to get out of here for a bit?”

Alec nods.

‘Autopilot,’ Cat thinks. Uses it to her advantage, without alarming Alec twists her fingers, placing a note into Magnus’s left hand, HE IS WITH ME. LOVE, CAT, so he does not miss it once he wakes, places several copies all around the room, just to make absolutely sure he cannot miss it.

Cat holds out a hand, “Come on then. Any requests?”

“Warm, abandoned. Sand maybe? Maybe a beach?"

Cat smiles comfortingly at him, Magnus has told her the story of that afternoon of travel and how he had finally had the courage to confess to his growing feelings toward Alec. He has also told her how it had kind of backfired for a moment there and then.

Many of the mornings that Magnus has made sure he is up before Alec steers he has spent on the phone to Cat, dissecting his feelings, making room for his worries to be expressed, asking for advice, receiving it unsolicited too.

They have been sitting in the soft light of a slowly more and more vibrant growing sunrise when Alec with a sigh, still starring out onto the tranquil ocean, Cat by his side, works up the courage to say, “I need those changes we talked about. I need them NOW.” Sobs break free then and Cat puts her arm around him, allows Alec to lean onto her as he gasps in the ocean air, grasps for words, “Catarina, please. PLEASE!”

She is not about to suggest, to put ideas in Alec’s head. There are always options, dark solutions, too effective, always taking more than one bargains for. So instead she simply places a hand against the dressing on Alec’s neck and asks, “What do you have in mind?” She can always tweak the answer into a more realistic course of action, should it already be too far out there.

Alec exhales sharply as Cat’s hand rests against the patch he had forgotten had been visible to her all along, and Cat is no fool. ‘She needs to hear me say it.’ He exhales heavily, “I want to cut them all up and for you to heal them. Like you did before on my arm. It’s too much to carry any of them around whole anymore. They are worse than useless to me. It hurts so much, Catarina. Too much. I want to be allowed to forget.” He sees her unhappy look at his word choice, and he understands, she wants realism from him if she is going to go into this with him, take this huge step with him, “… or at least leave behind. I want to move on. I will never go back to that life. I will not ever want to. I know that with absolute clarity now.”

Catarina stays quiet.

Alec does not miss the frown, the concerns, the doubt still edged into it. “Catarina, I … yesterday I … I lost it. I needed to scrub off that feeling and the bathroom is full of sharp obj….”

“Honey, you had a relapse,” Cat tries to reassure carefully.

“Catarina, no! It was so much more. You said to take action ….”

“I didn’t mean cutting, Alec, you need to know that.”

“I know that. It was … different, it felt different this time. I … I don’t ever want to sit in a bathroom again trying to scrape of my own flesh because my mind cannot take having to look at these… these THINGS anymore. By …, I don’t know how anymore but … Cat, please let … don’t let Magnus have to find me all cut up again, left with no choice but to put me back together some way. One day I might cut up my torso so bad I’d bleed out. I don’t want to. I don’t want to make Magnus watch. I don't want to keep hurting him.”

"You keep talking about Magnus and his feelings," Cat says, eyebrows raised.

"I promise, I don't want to hurt me anymore either. I never really wanted it. I used to need it. I don't feel that way anymore, it's more these markings now reminding me of so much pain that I keep lashing out at them. I ... I, I think that is why it is so important for me to have them removed or at least cut up already. They keep tearing at me, my mind. I want to claim it back. Them. Both. My mind and my body."

“Let me think for a while,” she replies as she pulls Alec into both her arms.

He tries his best to relax into it.

When she lets go of him again the sun is much higher in the sky.

“Can I suggest something?”

“After last night, what I did to him, I couldn’t ask him to be involved in this. So … if it doesn’t involve Magnus I’m all ears.”

“You’ve learned about potions the last weeks.”

Alec nods, listening attentively.

“How would you feel about me mixing you a potion that would remove all markings?”

“Something like that exists?”

“Well, in a way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Alec, let us play with open cards here. The potion lays a filter over your perception, so … to you the marking will become invisible, as long as you keep taking the potion. We’d have to figure out how much and how often you will need a refill in order to keep that filter up for you. But yeah, that I could ABSOLUTELY do for you. Would, gladly.”

Alec huffs, “So they wouldn’t be … gone?”

“No.”

“I’d have to tell Magnus?”

“You wouldn’t HAVE to, but I think it would help to have more than me in the in. Especially considering you two live together.”

Alec grows quiet again quickly.

When he stays quiet Catarina adds, “I get that you didn’t call me with being medicated even being an option in mind. If you want to think about it for a while ….”

Alec searches out Catarina’s eyes then.

All she sees in his is determination.

“I want to try.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Can I help with it somehow?”

“It should be morning soon in New York too. What do you say we make a small detour pick up some French bread and croissants and head back to your place? Surprise Magnus with breakfast?”

“I’m all for it.”

So two portal trips later they are standing in the apartment’s kitchen, brewing coffee, getting eggs, butter and marmalade ready.

Alec is pouring orange juice into three glasses when a startled and scared looking Magnus, eyes wide, hair wild, comes storming into the kitchen. Alec does not have to be told what this is about, would not have to be told even if he did not pick up on Magnus scanning Alec’s form for any sign of new injury before even saying a single word. All he can find, Alec knows, is that apart from the dressings on his stomach all the other patches are gone from his body again, Cat had helped him to remove them still at the beach.

“Sweetheart,” it comes out as a half sob.

“Hey,” Alec replies warmly.

Magnus is holding him shuddering into the hug within seconds of the reply.

“Don’t do this to me again.”

“I don’t intend to anymore.”

Magnus breathes into their embrace.

“Catarina and I will explain as soon as we have all had some breakfast.”

“’K.”

Catarina is busying herself with setting the table, lets them stand and hold each other all through it. She and Magnus have had many a talk about not letting go of something good if you do not have to, and Catarina agrees with Magnus’s apparent assessment of the situation wholeheartedly, ‘Alec is something brilliant.’

When Magnus brings himself to open the hug up again he kisses Alec soundly before, breathing deeply, searching out his eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t careful enough.” Seeing Alec’s questioning gaze Magnus adds, “You woke up first.”

“Oh,” Alec replies, “I guess I did. You shouldn’t feel bad about it. I called Catarina, I didn’t ….” Alec breaks off, retreats from Magnus, heads to the table and sits down, shaky hand reaching for the hot coffee, freshly poured into the mug by Catarina a moment ago.

Magnus quickly follows his boyfriend’s steps, squats down beside him and reaches up to pry Alec’s tense hand free from the coffee mug, keeps it in his. “Darling. I love you.” It is a ‘You can talk to me about anything’ in disguise. They both know it.

“I love you.” The unmistakeable ‘I want to talk to you too.’ “After what I did to you last night … I, urgh, I needed to ask Catarina for help. I don’t ever want to put you or me through that again. I don’t want that to be us. Me the mess, you having to put me together over and over and over and ….” Alec breaks off, sure he made his point.

“Darlin’, I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Alec is overtaken by tears, “You shouldn’t have to. I don’t want that to be us. I don’t want you to think, to settle for us being no more than that.”

“Darling, we already are more.”

“I can’t do all this to you.”

Catarina, holding back so far, says, “Alec asked me for a solution to his rune problem. Should I tell him the option we discussed, hun?” A brief nod from Alec is all Catarina needs to go on. “I know of a potion, I’ve not made it myself before, but I have the recipe for sure, somewhere. Give me an afternoon and I’ll find it.”

Magnus swallows nervously, “What does it do?”

“A perception filter.”

“So it’s not a one time fix.”

Catarina shakes her head. “He would have to keep taking it at specific intervals that we’d need to figure out.”  
There is deep concern seeping from Magnus’s next words, “Are there any footnotes on long term effects? Anything known?”

“I’ll bring the recipe and some of my books over and we can look into it together. The three of us.”

“Yes please,” Alec is quick to chime back in.

“Deal,” she says, smiles at him, pulls him into a firm embrace. “Magnus?”

“You want this?” he asks Alec.

“I want to try. For me. For us.”

“Okay then,” Magnus's smile is watery.

Catarina cannot miss the clear lack of enthusiasm in Magnus's voice, 'Fear.' She hauls him into a tight hug. “We’ll make it the highest quality of a potion we can, minimum of side effects, maximum longevity.”

Looking around the table, tears in his eyes, Alec says, “I trust you, both of you.”

Magnus knows Alec means it with all his heart.

Never in his life has Magnus been more afraid of disappointing someone.

After breakfast Catarina leaves.

“Can we go back to bed?” Alec inquires with some hesitation.

Magnus takes Alec in his arms, holds on tight as he shakes his head, “I have clients to see today, darling.” He hears Alec take a shaky breath. “You go ahead, I will come back and join you as soon as possible, promise.”

Alec nods but somehow Magnus doubts he will find his boyfriend anywhere close to a bed when he gets back.  
Nearly four hours later Magnus walks back into the apartment to find Alec in the kitchen, surrounded by several batches of freshly baked cookies, radio playing in the background. “You have kept busy, I see.”

“I’m so tired, but I needed this more,” Alec answers with a sigh. ‘… with you gone,’ he does not put the pressure of these words on Magnus. Does not want Magnus to feel like that about something that is his to grow out of. And yet, somehow Magnus seems to understand.

“Want a break? A cuddle?”

“A nap, please.”

Settling onto the mattress instantly does a lot to relax his stressed limbs. Alec’s hand closes around Magnus’s resting joined on Alec’s stomach, Magnus spooning him. Alec closes his eyes, enjoying the warmth encasing him, filling his bones.

Alec feels the rise and fall of Magnus’s chest against his back. Alec’s breathing stutters as Alec tries to put his in sync with Magnus’s, and he ends up chocking on his own breath, coughing. Alec turns out of the embrace onto his back, Magnus looking down into his eyes scoots right up to Alec again.

“What can I do?” Magnus asks.

Alec shakes his head, tears prompted by the coughing are slipping out the sides of his eyes, wetness trickling into his ear on the right, head slightly tilted towards Magnus. A wet sniff.

“Oh, darling. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. So much going round and round in my head after yesterday. I cannot turn it off.”

“You shouldn’t have to. You don’t, with me.” Magnus quietly caresses Alec’s cheek, wiping away some of his tears instantly replaced by new ones.

“Usually I just hate myself. I was SO angry with Jace when he came here, attacked you. I never get angry with other people. I am SO angry at her. She left … knowing. KNOWING!”

Magnus moulds himself firmly against Alec’s side.

Alec turns fully towards Magnus’s warm calming presence.

Then it takes forty-three minutes for Alec to speak again, all the while the gears in his mind spinning. “I’m so used to blaming myself for everything. People around me always did. My parents … always did. If something went in any way not according to what they had planned for me they told me it was a mistake, my fault.” Alec swallows down a lump in his throat, “You know what I just realized for the first time?”

Magnus asks quietly, “What, darlin’?”

“If something in THEIR lives did not go their way they blamed it on me too. What kind of a parent does that?” Turning onto his back, starring at the ceiling, he produces a frustrated grunt, “They have taken away even so much more from me than I’d ever realized before.”

Magnus scoots so close their sides are touching. He intertwines one hand with Alec’s, squeezes it tightly as he, joining Alec in starring at the ceiling, says, “It’s been centuries and I still have those moments in which I learn something new, do something new, and realize for the first time a way in which I was hurt as a child by someone I trusted. Memory is tricky, and pain … hides from us just as much as we hide from it. To enable us to keep going.”

Eyes still fixed on the ceiling, Alec lifts their joined hands to his lips, presses a lingering kiss to Magnus’s skin that says all that needs to be said.

Alec knows there will always be parts of himself that he will mourn. As little lost as he feels these days with Magnus by his side, some things cannot be regained. Alec finds himself frowning as his mother’s smile pops into his head. Then again … maybe more can ‘… than I dare dream.’

The rest of the day is spent cuddling, eating comfort food, and warming each other to the bone.

Catarina joins them for breakfast again the next day. "I called in a family emergency at work."

Hearing as much gives Alec an unexpected warm feeling inside.

Catarina and Magnus, setting to work with precision and determination as soon as breakfast is done, give Alec genuine hope untainted by new fear.

After two hours of all three of them studying the texts together and five hours of measuring, steering and mixing, of waiting and carefully watching the potion brewing to make sure it is always kept at as steady a temperature as the recipe asks for, Catarina turns smiling to Alec, who has been standing right beside her in nervous anticipation for quite a while.

“It’s ready?”

It is a small practise portion, three maybe four vials will come of it at most, "In order to not be wasteful with the ingredients", Catarina had explained earlier. In case something does go wrong the first time round.

“It’s ready.” Catarina instantly busies herself with filling the empty vials. “Three portions.”

Finding Magnus’s unglamoured eyes, Alec lets out a shaky breath. Alec watches confused when Magnus’s features are suddenly taken over by a frown.

“Cat, what are you doing?”

Alec looking back to her finds her standing there empty vial in hand.

“Oh come on, Magnus. You didn’t seriously think I’d let him try anything I don’t know for sure is safe,” Catarina replies unshaken.

“You drank some?” Alec asks, worried for his friend.

“Well, hun, there is this one tattoo I’ve always regretted,” she winks at him.

“And now we … wait?”

“And now we wait,” Magnus confirms, “but only Cat will know if it worked.”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

They settle on the couch, put on a movie and Cat keeps pushing up her jumper to check on one of her more beloved tattoos. She notices Alec’s tentative gaze, so exposes it to full view. Two lines of writing, in cursive writing, ‘Actual handwriting?’ Alec thinks.

“She wrote it herself you know.”

“Who?”

“Gertrude.”

“She and Cat lived together in Paris for a while, Gertrude Stein,” Magnus chimes into the conversation.

Cat reads the words tattooed slightly to the right, just below her bellybutton out to Alec, “Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.”

Alec, seeing Magnus smile, states, “You were friends with her as well.”

Magnus nods, “Wonderful spirit that woman had, enviable perspectives on her world and time.”

After 23 more minutes of movie Catarina breaks the quiet settled around them with a shout, “It’s gone. It WORKS! Let me just,” with those words Catarina jumps up, takes off her shirt and trousers just standing there then in her underwear squealing with joy, “They are ALL gone! YES!”

Alec watches as Cat still only in her underwear embraces Magnus, gets hung up on all the tattoos he can see but Catarina perceives to be gone from her body. Wonders which one she was talking about earlier. He cannot tell, to him they look all equally fascinating. He can still appreciate them, to his own surprise, even though he wants his runes only gone.

“How are you feeling otherwise? Anything strange going on?” Magnus asks, Cat still in his arms. Letting go, Magnus looks her over several times for any signs of pain, anxiety, outbreaks on her skin. The most frequent bad reactions to potions of any kind.

“No, nothing. I think we really actually did it, on our first try. Of course I am a warlock, Alec, and you still might experience some mild side effects of some kind, but I am confident we will be able, if needed, to counteract them with some simple potions, you know, in case of nausea or fever or something.” Catarina finds Alec’s eyes, and notices he is about to cry, “Oh , hun. Come here.” She pulls him into a hug in which Magnus rejoins them.

“You two are … ,” Alec cannot find a word enough in any way for these two people, these two “so… so unexpected.”

“We love you,” Catarina supplies, and then Alec is crying, these words from Catarina feeling anything but empty. Backed up by action. So many actions in so short a time shared. Very much unlike these very same words uttered by his siblings over and over to no avail whatsoever he really only fully has come to realize now.

“It’s been a long day,” Catarina murmurs quietly. “It is hard to say how long the potion we made will have effect. We’ll really only know when we see how it does for you yourself, Alec. Do you want to have a go, before we call it a day? You two should get some time to yourselves. It's been eventful weeks really.”

Magnus looks at Alec questioning.

Alec taking a deep breath, eyes closing and opening, says, “Yes. Yeah, let’s try.”

“Alright, I’ll start the clock as soon as you have this in you,” Catarina picks up a vial and hands it to Alec.

“Wait!” Magnus calls as Alec raises the vial to his lips. “Let me just get out some simple remedies for you to take should the potion agree less with you.” Magnus pulls some vials from his cupboards, some roots to chew on from his cabinets. “Alright, go on.”

They sit back down on the couch together, all three of them, Alec curled into Magnus's side. Magnus holding him tightly to himself with both arms, placing kiss after kiss to his hair and forehead. “I’m right here.”

The movie is still playing, but it is not like anyone is paying much attention to it anymore. Both of the warlocks’ senses keenly focused on Alec’s well-being. Alec cuddled firmly against Magnus, Catarina a warming presence on his other side.

Alec has been staring at the cut up markings on his arm for a long time when Magnus hears him draw in a gasp.

“Alexander? What is it?” Magnus feels Alec begin to shake. “Darlin’, talk to me. Please.”

“Magnus, Catarina! They are disappearing.” Alec unfolds his limbs, pushes up his shirt to uncover his stomach, removes one of the dressings from his wounds, puts it back in place.

”Wow! I,” Alec fights for breaths, “I, … Cat, I … they, even the ...?” Alec jumps up and runs to the next full-length mirror. Takes off his shirt twists and turns for a full minute before his brain can believe his eyes.

Alec’s astonishment is matched by smiles of happiness on the two warlocks’ faces.

“I thought it would, but it doesn’t even matter to me that it is just an illusion.”

Catarina says with a smile, “I am SO happy to hear that.”

“How long did it take to manifest for me as a perception filter?” Alec asks starring again at his back and arms in the mirror.

Catarina checks the start time, “Around 53 minutes, so a bit longer than with me, around 40 minutes was my time. Now we wait to see how long it will last.”

“Has yours worn off yet?” Magnus asks.

Catarina shakes her head.

“Let me take care of it then,” Magnus suggests.

“I love you, but how are you going to do that? Alec and I are the only ones who will know when it will cease to work.”

“Fair enough,” Magnus admits. “I’ll make myself useful then and put on some coffee.”

“We’ll be right here,” Catarina quips.

“I can help,” Alec offers.

“It’s fine, darlin’. Take the moment to relax. It might end up being a long night. But if it gets to be too much let me know and we can just restart the experiment tomorrow morning, when it won’t ruin your sleep.”

Alec is decisive in his answer, “No. Thank you, but no.”

Magnus nods, a tender smile tinged with worry, “Extra strong coffee comin' up.”

Two cups of coffee each later, Catarina embraces both of them tightly once more, “I’ll monitor my time at home and stop by again tomorrow evening after work.”

“Thank you,” Alec hums.

Catarina leaves with a happy smile on her face and the potion still in full effect on her.

  
Magnus and Alec cook and eat dinner. After clearing away the dishes, noticing Alec’s tense staring at his arm, Magnus suggests, “How about some music? Or the radio maybe? Something else to think about while we wait.”

“Can you hold me?” Alec bursts out.

Magnus steps closer, pulls him into his arms, “Darling. Always.”

They settle down on the bed in Alec’s room, a British radio station Alec had requested humming in the background, as Alec, clad in soft PJs, Magnus too, is held firmly in Magnus’s arms. Alec has loved the feel of Magnus’s solid form moulded against his back from the first time he had been allowed to feel it, the comfort it brings him, the outer and inner warmth. Magnus’s arms are slung around his middle, and all of a sudden Alec has to fight the sleep he feels himself lulled into.

“Magnus?” Alec asks, grabing hold of the arms around him. Holding on to being held.

“Hm?”

“Tell me a story?”

Magnus tells two dozen before around six in the morning, after approximately 11 hours, slightly over, if Magnus’s calculations are right, Magnus hears a heavy huff of air being released from Alec’s lungs.

“Alexander? What is it? Are you in pain?”

“Still just dizzy,” Alec replies, like he had started to feel, even already lying down, around hour seven. “No, it’s the marks,” he shudders as he says the next words, “They are back,” audibly in distress.

Magnus feels Alec’s whole body tense and muscles tighten. So he gently coaxes Alec to turn to him, places a kiss to Alec’s hand, then begins to kiss up along his arm, his shoulder, his neck, nipping and biting in a way that has Alec’s eyes fall shut, has Alec shudder, whine, his breath stutter.

“I need you.”

Magnus kisses Alec so soundly, his head is pushed deep into the pillows, Magnus settling over Alec, Alec grinding up to find the much wanted, much needed contact, closeness, friction.

Magnus meets Alec’s jerking hips with his own. They fall into a grinding rhythm together, Alec’s breathing already heavy in Magnus’s ears.

Arms coming around Magnus's shoulders, holding on tightly, holding Magnus close as he can to himself, Alec buries his head against Magnus’s neck, whines, “I … I, YES! Make me forget.”

Magnus stills.

Alec whines unhappily, staying buried against his boyfriend, breathing in nothing but his unique scent.

“I don’t want to make you forget,” Magnus states, voice full of intent. “I want to help you remember, all the wonderful things about you that I know to be true, that I want you to be able to see too first, always, with every look into any reflecting surface. They matter so much more than any of these markings on your skin.”

Alec shudders. “Like?”

“Like the way you kiss me, hold me, hold yourself. Like the way you are with the customers, our patients, especially the kids. Your selfless kindness. Your warm voice. Your eyes. I so love your eyes. The love you hold in them, despite all the pain that you could so easily allow to drown that out, take over … everything. You are chosing kindness and love. And I love you so for it.”

“Please Magnus,” All Alec can manage past this is a moan, a whine.

With everything that has been going on they have never made it past a fumbling grind, coming together in their pants. Magnus is painfully aware. “Darling?”

“Please. Please! Magnus, touch me. I’m done waiting.” It is about so much more than sex.

Alec eases his hold on Magnus as Magnus with one hand moves to push Alec’s shirt up, placing kisses all over Alec’s stomach still covered in all manner of bandages. A brief nip at one of his nipples has Alec moan again, the sound resonating in Magnus’s own as Magnus’s other hand slowly glides along Alec’s abdomen, giving Alec every opportunity to stop him. He does not. Instead Alec arches into the touch as Magnus’s hand finds its way below the fabric and takes hold of Alec’s cock. He caresses the appendage carefully then gives it one experimental pump.

Alec’s eyes fall shut, as he pushes past shaking breaths, “Magnus! Please, keep going.”

“Darling,” Magnus prompts softly. It has the desired effect, Alec opening his eyes to a golden glow, putting Alec at instant ease, the whole of the man melting against the warlock as Magnus settles at his side, eye to eye, the two of them throwing themselves into a long drawn out kiss, soon dissolving into moans again on Alec’s end as Magnus’s hand, slippery with clearly magically supplied lube begins to move in a languid rhythm.  
As Magnus’s hand slowly speeds up, Alec’s hands both fist in Magnus’s shirt, pull and hold Magnus close, foreheads pressed together, Alec panting against Magnus lips, moan after moan as Alec comes apart in Magnus’s hand. Alec burrows completely against Magnus as his orgasm hits with full force. “Magnus,” is all that falls from his lips as the tension and relief of having mastered and enjoyed this new experience pushes Alec into spilling tears, “Magnus.”

“Please tell me that felt good for you,” Magnus looks for reassurance with a tinge of worry.

They both know Magnus is talking about much more than the physical side of pleasure, is wholeheartedly invested in Alec’s emotional pleasure.

Alec, breathing uneven still, is as close to Magnus as one can be without being connected more fully, physically. He murmurs into Magnus’s shoulder in contentment, “Great. It was great. I’m great. I feel ….”

“Great?” Magnus cannot help the grinning quip.

“… complete. More complete.”

Magnus’s eyes water, wonder in his voice, “That's how being with you makes me feel.”

“Thank you for letting me love you.”

Magnus holds Alec close as breaths even out, and even out further, change into the to Magnus by now reassuring rhythms of his boyfriend fast asleep in his arms. “Thank you.”

When Catarina comes back the following evening Alec and Magnus are prepared to get back to work.

“I got 14 hours out of it. You?”

“A little over 11,” Alec supplies.

Magnus nods along as Catarina states her conclusions, her plan, “11 hours, we can slightly push it to twelve to fourteen for you too I think. Probably to do with the factor of your higher body mass and me being a warlock, more easily taking to potions. But that is a good measure already, then you can take the potion simply twice a day at a 12 hour interval. Alec?” She asks as she sees his far off gaze. “How do you feel about that?”

“Hm?”

Smiling kindly, Catarina cups his chin, “Hun, what is it?”

“Sorry.”

“No need, just tell me what’s up, hun.”

“I," a sigh, "I’m worried about the constant reminder of it all. I don’t …, I have a bad track record with triggering events.”

There is not much either Catarina or Magnus can say to that, some worries cannot be taken away, only solutions tried out and then the fallout dealt with.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, after all the trouble ….”

“You don’t,” Catarina tries her best to reassure.

“We know how difficult this kind of step can be. How scary to anyone,” Magnus joins in softly.

Alec breathes deep, clears his throat, says nothing.

“Look, Alec,” Catarina supplies, “if you want I can put you under a spell that will take off some of the edge of the first week or even two while you are easing into making use of this medication.”

“Cat!”

“Magnus, you know just as well as I do that that is a standard practice for a lot of procedures.”

“I don’t … like it. Never have.” Magnus insists. “Feels wrong, to drug someone while they start administering new drugs. Free will and all.”

“Would it take away my free will?” Alec asks, clearly having hung on his boyfriend’s every word.

Magnus instantly feels guilty for not allowing Alec to make up his mind fully on his own.

Catarina shakes her head, “No it won’t. You decide to take the medication at the beginning and then the spell just keeps you calm so you don’t just break off the treatment in the middle of it all.”

“I agree with Magnus, I don’t like the way that sounds,” Alec shakes his head at himself more than anyone else. “I mean, I get how it can be useful for people. But … I don’t want it. To cheat or manipulate myself. People have done that to me all my life. I don’t want to keep it up. So, thank you, Catarina. But no thank you.”

“Alright,” she nods at him. “Magnus has the recipe. Magnus, you know how to increase the potency of the potion just slightly.”

Magnus nods.

“Then I think my job here is done. For the moment. If you need me give me a call.”

Catarina is about to turn and leave when Alec stops her with a hand on her shoulder. “Are you angry with me?”

Her eyes turn soft, “Hun, no. No I am definitely not.”

“Okay, good. Because you matter to me. Your opinion, your friendship matters to me.”

“Honey,” she simply says, as she leans in and places a kiss to Alec’s cheek. With a warm smile she turns and disappears through a portal, calling to Alec while stepping through, “I love you too. Call, whenever you need me, either of you,” she throws a soft look Magnus’s way before the portal closes.

Alec turns to Magnus, “She really isn’t mad?”

Magnus shakes his head, “She is a workaholic and chronically unhappy with the current state of the world, understandably, ever since I can remember. And her work here really was done, so she gets that itch then to move on to her next case.”

Alec looks disappointed.

Magnus pulls Alec in his arms, “She is not your mother, Alec. She will not wait a decade or so to reappear. She is our friend too. The thing that matters almost as much to Cat as her work does.”

Alec nods into the hug, clinging on for a while before Magnus waves one hand and a soft music begins to play throughout the apartment, Alec hearing his boyfriend whisper into his ear, “May I have this dance.”

“Yes,” Alec whispers in reply, and they never let go off each other, just sway for a good long while. Then they set to work on the slightly improved potion.

Twenty-four hours later Magnus and Alec have finished all of their current orders and closed up shop for the next two weeks. They also have brewed and stocked enough potion for Alec to comfortably, hopefully, get through the next two weeks.

Two full days have passed before Alec mentions some side effects growing stronger, and Magnus hands him, at Alec’s request, something to counteract them some.

“How long have you really been feeling dizzy, headaches coming on from time to time?”

“Since the evening of day one,” Alec admits sheepishly, knowing full well Magnus will be on his case for it. And he knows Magnus is right in it too.

“And you waited to let me know because …?”

“I was worried.”

“Darling, about what?”

“Taking something that will counteract my medication too well.”

Magnus holds on extra tight to Alec that night.

With Magnus’s and Alec's services all closed the apartment has been quiet, and both men have been enjoying their time alone immensely, even with Alec not always feeling up to much. Alec feels safe and reassured in these walls, even out on the patio looking across the city. The new perspective somehow managing to make him too feel all new about it.

They are curled up on the couch together, reading, as so often, especially these days, when the knock on their apartment door on day four of Alec’s new regime has Alec jump in Magnus arms. Alec’s heart instantly starts to race.

Magnus places a kiss to his temple. “Darling, I’ll go check who it is. Don’t worry. Go back to your reading.” Before Magnus leaves he, with a twist of his hand and some blue sparks flying, conjures a steaming cup onto the nearest steady surface. “Your favourite.”

Alec still shivers at the kindness overwhelming his senses, only really used to harshness and abuse. Some things need more than simply time.

One particular remedy of his is about to walk back into Alec’s life.

Alec hears the faint sound of faraway voices after the front door is opened. Then he hears footsteps, ‘Four pairs of feet.’ Shadowhunter training, Alec rolls his eyes at himself.

His heart is wildly jumping in his chest already as he sits up and peeks over the back of the couch.

Alec cannot help the frown he greets the new visitors with. “Magnus, who …,” but before he can bring out the full question Alec’s eyes meet the eyes of the teenager with the dark brown hair … and one arm. “Max!”

The 19-year-old breaks out into a wide grin, “Hi, Alec.” Before he has even finished the greeting he has Alec’s arms around him, hugging him so hard he can barely breathe.

Alec lets go and takes a step back again, looks around for Magnus, finds him a wide smile on his face standing a bit to the side, clearly trying to not get into the way of this reunion. A shudder runs through Alec, and Max does not miss it.

“Hey, why are you nervous?”

“I’m not,” Alec does his best to deflect the claim. He convinces no one in the room. Another shudder, a deep breath, and Alec walks over to Magnus, takes his hand. “Max, this is Magnus. My boyfriend.” ‘No more lies.’ In exchange ’Consequences.’ This time around they are far from anything bad Alec has had to deal with so far.

Max’s smile does not budge one bit. “Alec, I am so happy for you. You too, Magnus. My brother is totally worth it, all the drama our family brings. I promise.”

“I know,” Magnus chimes in, asks in the same breath, “Who are your friends?”

And all of a sudden it is Max who wears that same nervous, frowny look Alec had just featured on his face mere moments ago. “This is Phillip, and this is Honora.”

“Everyone just calls me Nora though. Honora is my grandmother, really,” the blond haired young woman chimes in.

“Hi,” Phillip adds, apparently much more nervous than Max or Nora, fidgeting with one of the buttons come slightly loose on his jacket.

Alec watches as Max gently places a hand on Phillip’s back, smiles at him, mouths something to him neither Alec nor Magnus can make out. But Phillip’s shoulders relax slightly as Max’s hand moves soothingly up and down his back a couple of times before falling away.

“Oh cool!” Nora takes some steps forward, having spotted Alec’s current potions read. “ _Warlocks, Witches, Winterspells_. I have been looking for a copy for ages. This book is harder to come by than the only seasonally available ingredients for potions it talks about. I have only seen an excerpt from it in another work,” she beams at Magnus.

“Actually, Alec is the one working with it currently.”

Nora’s focus shifts, “You are studying potions too?”

“Wait, you are?” Alec asks.

Nora nods enthusiastically. “My dad insisted on an extracurricular, so I got creative, and he had no choice but to say yes when I had already stacked my room with like 50 books on the topic.”

“53,” Phillip chimes in grinning too now. “And she isn’t even exaggerating. Nora does nothing half way.”

“So it seems,” Magnus says laughing. “You also into potions, Phillip?”

“I dabble.”

“You mean you mess with my valid attempts,” Nora squints at him.

Phillip just shrugs, smiling sheepishly.

“How about I show you guys some basic moves and we give our Lightwoods some time to reacquaint. I’m sure they have a lot to catch up on.” Magnus feels Alec’s hand squeeze his appreciatively before he sees the fond smile on his face.

“Hell yes!” Nora squeals. “A lesson with THE Magnus Bane who wrote _Poison or Prerequisite – A Question of Power_ I am SO in!”

“Me too,” Phillip says, maybe then her potion making will finally turn into a viable skill.

“Hey!” Nora replies, bumping her shoulder into Phillip’s side, who just chuckles.

Magnus kisses Alec’s cheek before the three of them trot off into the living room, Magnus’s work space.

Alec turns to look back at Max, who is fondly smiling gazing after his friends.

“How about we go to the kitchen? Have some tea?”

“Sounds great,” Max replies.

Alec also brings out some of his newest cookie creations.

Max already has three in his mouth before Alec has finished listing all the ingredients.

“These are awesome! You are really great at baking, Alec.”

“Well, the one recipe.”

Suddenly Max’s gaze is very serious, the boy still chewing, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

"Make yourself small. You don’t have to to please people, you know?” Max sighs, “I know mom and dad raised you that way, because they couldn’t stand feeling outdone by anyone, especially anyone their junior, even their own children. Especially their own children, it seemed.”

“How are you …, how did you come to realize that at 19? I only recently …, Magnus helped me figure that out. I couldn’t …, I still can’t …,”

“Alec, breathe.”

Alec only notices then that he is almost hyperventilating.

Max takes one of his brother’s hands and begins to take deep breaths in and out, prompting Alec to join in.

After a minute more Alec is feeling more grounded again.

“Thank you, Max.”

“Any time. I’ve had my share of panic attacks.”

Alec looks stricken with sadness when he asks, “You have?”

“Yeah,” Max answers, reaching up to the back of his neck, rubbing at it for seconds before bouncing right back to his cheerful self.

“I’m glad you have worked through them,” Alec states, half-asking.

“Oh yes, I’m …, finding Phillip and Nora really helped. Immensely.”

“I am so happy you have such good friends.”

“Alec,” Max makes a point to take his cup of tea from the counter, walk over to the table, and sit down. Alec follows suit. Only then does Max continue, “Jace told me where I can find you. Mom was against it, but I needed to see you.”

“Mom thinks I’m a bad influence on you now?”

“No.” At Alec’s sceptical look he repeats the answer, “No! Alec, that’s not it at all. Mom, didn’t want … she thought seeing me might hurt you.”

“Why would getting to see my little brother hurt me? I can’t believe her.”

“Alec! No! You need to talk to her again, give her a chance to explain.”

“How much she despises me?”

“Alec.”

“How I best loose the family name?”

“Alec!”

“How …, how I was not AM NOT worth protecting from Robert?”

“ALEC! I’m sorry she left him for me.”

“You shouldn’t have to feel sorry for that. She should!”

“Believe me, Alec, she is SO sorry. She is so sorry she didn’t understand Robert would never change, that he would just look for a new target.”

“A new target? What are you talking about exactly, Max?”

“You really need to talk to mom, really, Alec, please. Give her another chance. We are going to leave again soon, Izzy has already fully taken over again at the institute.”

“Mom doesn’t deserve another chance.”

“Yes she does!" Max's gaze unsteady, filled with sadness as he brings out, "Alec, ... she saved me. She saved me from so much!”

“I don’t understand.”

“Phillip and Nora, they aren’t just my friends. Well, they _are_ my best friends, and they are also my boyfriend and my girlfriend, and each other’s, and I’m theirs.”

Alec can only stare.

After twenty seconds of silence, that do feel like much, much longer, Max adds, “Say something, please.”

“You … Phillip, and Nora.”

“Yes. I’m bisexual, Alec. I came out to mom on my fourteenth’s birthday when she found me crying, sobbing, having a panic attack in my room.”

Alec is piecing it all together now, huge chunks at least, “Weeks before you left.”

“Alec, when we left, she told me later, she … she already knew you were gay, and she always wanted to be there for you. She just didn’t know how, because she also knew Robert. She saw how you hurt but felt powerless to do anything with Izzy, and then Jace and me so little still, she was scared, more than that she … . You need to talk to her, please. Please! I can’t explain it properly. She and you, you have so much more in common than you think. Please talk to her, she misses you terribly.”

“So, you, and Phillip, and Nora?” Alec asks and regrets it instantly, seeing hurt and something akin to fear hush across his little brother’s face, who stutters out the next words, clearly shaken.

“I thought if anyone would understand it would be you.”

“Why?”

“You also need two people to complete you. To feel balanced.”

“Two?” Alec asks, of himself not Max.

And then Max understands Alec’s questions, Alec’s confusion, understands them having nothing to do with judging or rejecting him and his relationships, but everything to do with never having been told that something that he felt was right for him, something that he wanted is actually okay to feel, to want, to be.

  
It has been years since Max has had to hide his feelings, Alec is still supressing parts of himself on instinct, every day.

  
“You are allowed, you know that, deep down. Right?”

Alec can only frown, “Allowed?”

“You are allowed to love more than one person. To love them in different ways or exactly the same.”

Alec chokes on his next breath, his eyes beginning to water. ‘Magnus … AND Jace?’ The first tears slide. Alec opens his mouth to speak but only a gasp for air forms in his throat.

The truth is up until weeks ago Alec had not been able to trust he was allowed any love in his life at all. Maybe his sister’s if he would manage to hold on to his masks, stay in the institute.

Alec has never cried in front of his little brother before. He presses his left hand to his eyes, attempting to hide his tears or himself he does not know which. His shaking frame, his trembling lips leave no doubt what is going on behind this hastily thrown on cover. Alec's old masks are, thankfully, too far out of reach.

Max takes Alec’s right hand in his. “I’m sorry, Alec. I’m so sorry you didn’t get to be free like me. It shouldn’t be a luxury.”

Minutes later, when Alec can breathe again and meets Max’s eyes the first thing he asks is, “Are you happy?”

“Being me makes me happy, yes,” Max replies.

“You don’t wear a prosthetic arm anymore?”

“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Today,” Max bites his lip, “I wanted to be just me with you.”

Alec smiles at him, proud.

“Also I was a little scared you might not recognize me anymore. It has been years. I didn’t want that pain for you or me, so I did all I could to minimize the chances.”

“Oh, Max. It wasn’t the arm, your eyes, I’ll always recognize the wide-eyed wonder in them. You’ve always been fiercely you. All out there. I am SO glad mom did for you what she did. I’m just really sad she couldn’t do it for me too. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive her that.”

Max smiles sadly at him.

Alec wants to let her back in, maybe too badly, “When I saw her ... . Mom is more herself too these days. Happier?”

“She is. She definitely is.”

  
“I am scared I will let her walk all over me if I do let her back in." Alec finally admits. "You really think we should talk?”

  
“I understand why you couldn’t have her come here last time, but a café was no place for her to say what she needs to and what you need to hear. There are answers to a lot of your questions, to a lot of your pain and anger. But you need to give her a chance to give them to you, and you’ll need some privacy for all the tears and shouting at each other that that might involve. Can I bring her by, please?”

Alec is still hesitant. “How did you get to be so knowledgable?”

“Like you did, I worked for it. For a long time. I just got the chance to start much earlier in life. I wish you had too, more than anything.”

“Okay.”

“Mmh?” Max asks unable to follow.

“Bring her by.”

Max jumps up, excitedly pulls Alec against him, “I can stay with you for all of it. I’d love to get to be here for you. You always were there for me at the institute.”

“I’d love for you to be here much more often,” Alec says softly, hugging back fiercely.

Maryse herself takes some convincing to stop by the apartment, Alec’s new home.

“She is afraid to wreck it for you,” Max tells Alec in a phone call the next day after he has managed for her to agree to meet Alec again, this time with Max by her side, Magnus by Alec's as before.

“Tell her,” Alec lets out a heavy breath, “tell her I want to understand, that I need to know whatever she can tell me.”

“Okay.”

“Tell her I don’t want to be angry anymore, and that I need her help with that.”

“You would have made for a great diplomat, Alec.”

“Yeah, well, in another life, maybe. I got my potions now. And Magnus.”

“Magnus is awesome,” Max agrees, revels in the feeling of hearing his older brother’s happy laughter at the other end of the line. “See you tomorrow then.”

“See you tomorrow.”


End file.
